Chapter 316 Artillery Upgrade

These sloops are his next weapon to deal with the Spanish fleet. They must form an army before the Spanish fleet comes to Taipei, so that the sea wolf can get the initiative to fight at sea.

Therefore, the opinions of Liu Yidao and others are more in line with his ideas, so after discussing with the public, Yu Xiaotian still decided that it would be better to take action this time, and kill the warship fleet they gathered before the officers and soldiers began to launch, and directly disrupt the government's plan.

Comrade Lin Yiyang, the staff officer of Lin, who had just been recalled from Tamsui City, also agreed with Yu Xiaotian's idea.

In the matter of dealing with the officers and soldiers, Lin Yiyang and Yu Xiaotian's ideas also coincide. Although Lin Yiyang did not know that Yu Xiaotian was going to fight with the Spanish next year, Lin Yiyang, as a scholar of the Ming Dynasty, still did not want Yu Xiaotian to go too fast or too far on the road of rebellion.

But he is not opposed to repairing Fujian officers and soldiers and letting the new Fujian governor Zhu Qin suffer, but he also hopes that the killing of the officers and soldiers can be controlled within the acceptable range of the government and the imperial court. Otherwise, it may cause the anger of the imperial court and gather military warships from southern provinces to deal with him. Seawolves, in that case, the sea wolves will be lively in the future.

Although the Ming Dynasty is now suffering from Xishan, after all, a thin camel is bigger than a horse. Once it is really angry, it is not impossible to mobilise a hundred and 80,000 troops. Once the court wants to do something, I'm afraid they can't imagine the large resources that can be used. This Zhejiang Once the ships in Fujian and Guangdong coastal areas are ordered to build warships, it may not be enough to build thousands of warships a year. No matter how strong the sea wolf is, it can't stand so many fleets and soldiers.

In addition, there are still hostile forces such as Chu Cailao around, who have been staring at the sea wolf. If the government fights against the sea wolf, these guys will definitely take the opportunity to beat the falling dog and keep the sea wolf to death in the future, so that they will be happy, and after killing the sea wolf and Yu Xiaotian, this Fujian coast It has become their world and has real benefits for them.

Therefore, for various reasons, Lin Yiyang also agreed to control the conflict between the sea wolf and Fujian officers and soldiers within a certain range, which should not only hurt Fujian officials, but also not cause the matter too much, leaving a certain room for the sea wolf to manoeuvre in the future.

So, under the discussion of everyone, a battle plan was gradually formed and finally finalized by Yu Xiaotian.

In a year, the sea wolf will have two big battles. The first time is to deal with the old group of fellow Chu Cai, and the second time is to deal with the current government officials. For the sea wolf, the pressure is not small.

Fortunately, Yu Xiaotian's industry exploded in Nanri Island early in the morning. Now the industrial foundation of the sea wolf is quite good, so that the sea wolf group has basically achieved self-sufficiency in terms of weapons.

Although the sea wolf has basically stopped the production of cold weapons and changed it to secretly buy them from the land, it does not have a great impact for the sea wolf. This underground transaction can basically meet the sea wolf's demand for cold weapons, but it has freed up more craftsmen to invest in the production of firearms, which has greatly increased Production of sea wolf firearms.

Nowadays, the guns produced in the fields of freshwater and chicken cages are not included. The cannons and shootings of Nanri Island alone can produce nearly 30 or 40 guns per month. Among them, the production of six-pound guns has been gradually compressed and began to produce a twelve Pound short-body barrel artillery.

This 12-pound short gun is much shorter than the previous 12-pound short gun. Although this reduces the effective range of this gun, it greatly reduces the weight of the gun and reduces the weight of the whole gun to between 500 and 600 catties. In this way, it can be easily equipped to the sea wolf. On most of the former warships.

This 12-pound short gun is actually a kind of mountain howitzer. The direct shooting distance is only two or three hundred meters. The longest range is only about one kilometer, and the effective range is about 300 meters. After exceeding 300 meters, the accuracy is basically uncontrollable. When used on land, it can still be shot a little farther, but If you want to hit the enemy ship at sea, you can basically only be within 200 meters.

However, this does not have a great impact on the sea wolf fleet, because even if they are equipped with 12 pounds of long cannons, the effective range can reach 500 meters, but in naval battles, such a long-range firepower advantage can only be reflected in the bombardment on the other side, when they are really fighting a naval battle. Cheng's advantages cannot be effectively brought into play most of the time.

This is also the reason why many naval battles control the combat distance of about 200 meters in the era of sail warships, and even the battleships of the two sides are closer to 100 meters face to face before they begin to bombard each other, because the naval guns of this era do not have a stable device, and it is difficult to ensure shooting accuracy a little farther away.

Therefore, Yu Xiaotian felt that the 12-pound naval gun and 12-pound cannon produced before was a little chicken ribs. Most of the time, he could not give full play to the advantages of combat, but also increased the weight of the gun and increased the cost. In addition, the long-body cannon was also difficult to arrange on the ship, and could only be installed on the deck of the ship as a swing. When using the cannon, reloading and promoting the reset of the cannon, it is also relatively difficult.

Because of the weight, it is not possible to equip some smaller warships. It can only be loaded on slightly larger ships with about 300 materials, and the hull needs to be reinforced.

After such a long trial, the six-pound gun that was popularly equipped on the sea wolf warships, although it is far more powerful than the shabby guns used by its peers, after all, the quality of the six-pound cannon is limited. In naval battles, it can often only make small holes on enemy ships and cannot easily destroy enemy ships. Structure often needs to concentrate a lot of firepower and repeatedly fire on an enemy ship. It takes a lot of shells to completely destroy the enemy ship.

If it is used to deal with the rough-skinned and thick-skinned Western-style sailboats, then the six-pound cannon shells hit these Western-style sailboats. In many cases, I'm afraid that they can't even guarantee penetration and can't effectively destroy enemy ships at all.

Therefore, the six-pound gun has become a chicken rib in the eyes of Xiaotian. There is little need to continue to increase production, and the soldiers can't be equipped, but the sailors think it is not powerful enough.

Therefore, after some consideration, Yu Xiaotian opened a new gun model and specially tested this short-body 12-pound mountain howitzer.

This new 12-pound short gun is compressed to about ten times the length and diameter ratio of the body tube, which makes the short gun look very short and a little unattractive. Moreover, the gun wall of the body barrel is also thinner than the previous 12-pound gun, and the amount of charge is slightly reduced, but it makes the gun The weight has been greatly reduced, making it similar to the weight of the previous six-pounder gun, but the close-range power has doubled.

Even in a naval battle, as long as it is within an effective range of 200 meters, it can cause far more casualties to enemy ships than the longer six-pound cannon.

More importantly, after such a long time of casting cannons, the cannon and Yu Xiaotian themselves have accumulated considerable experience. The iron casting method greatly reduces the difficulty of casting cannons and greatly improves the yield of casting cannons, so that the sea wolf has the advantage of casting cannons at any time all year round.

However, after all, when casting the gun, there is still a faster cooling speed on the outside of the casting gun body than the inside, forming a certain internal and external pressure, causing the hardness of the outer layer with fast external cooling to exceed the inner wall of the slow cooling, so that the inner ward hardness of the inner layer, which should have been stronger than the outer wall of the gun body, is not as hard as the outer wall of the gun body. As a result, defective products will still be produced to a certain extent, which can only be scrapped.

There are still certain defects in the iron casting method, which makes the yield of the casting gun hover between 70% and 80%, which can no longer be improved. There are also heavier guns with larger caliber, because the cooling speed of the inner and outer walls of the barrel is different, and the cooling speed of the outer wall exceeds the inner wall, resulting in a higher waste rate of cast guns.

I'm afraid this is also the reason why when Daming buys a Hongyi cannon, a cannon costs more than 1,000 taels of silver. In fact, the casting cost of a Hongyi cannon is not too high. Even if the clay casting method is used to cast cannons, the casting cost of an 18-pound cannon will not exceed 150 taels of silver.

But when the Portuguese sold the cannon to Daming, an 18-pound gun was still sold for more than 1,000 taels of silver. In terms of cost, this also needs to calculate the scrap rate, and freight and profit should be added to the price. In addition, in this era, Westerners have not invented the iron casting method. , is also the method of casting cannons. As a result, when the artillery is cast, the waste rate is also high, far more than the sea wolf's iron casting method, which leads to the high price of Hongyi cannon imported from Daming.

Even so, when the Portuguese sold these 18-pound cannons to Daming, they were already very cheap, because these guns were not made by the Portuguese themselves, but simply salvaged from a British sunken ship in the sea around Macao, so they were sold so cheaply.

It is said that the price of the five 18-pound guns bought by Mr. Chu Cai from the Portuguese is more than 3,000 taels per cannon, which is black enough!

It is for these reasons that in order to ensure the robustness of the gun body, the gunsmith had no choice but to increase the strength of the gun barrel at the cost of increasing the thickness of the gun wall, which also brought the disadvantage of increasing the weight of the artillery, and at the same time increased the scrap rate, forming a vicious circle.

For Yu Xiaotian, who also encountered this problem, he has been busy during this period and has been thinking about how to continue to improve the quality and yield of the cannon. While ensuring the power of the artillery, he can find ways to reduce the weight of some cannons and fundamentally solve the problem of the waste rate of the cannon.

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