nucmednet Chapter 22 Firepower Upgrade
Chapter 22 Firepower Upgrade
While everyone was mobilizing to build factories and upgrade industry, Alice arrived at the Trian Armory—which had now transformed from a simple bungalow into a facility with four large production workshops and steam power—though, of course, lanterns were still used for lighting.
"Your Highness, welcome back to the Trian Armory."
Factory director Trant Maranen also served as a member of the executive committee of the Amerlane Ordnance Bureau. This young inventor was said to have graduated from the Wisdom Palace in the Eastern Desert and had participated in the development of various complex and exquisite engineering machines of the Sandman Empire.
"This is......."
Alice raised a rifle. Unlike the Brownbes flintlock rifle and Minié long rifle, which were now standard issue, this rifle was largely the same as the former two, but its receiver was clearly more complex.
"I have read your 'Theory on the Design of Artillery and Firearms,' which is an experimental breech-loading gun, but no matter how I try, I still find that its power is not as good as the Minié rifle."
The order to replace the Brownbes flintlock musket with the new Minié rifle was issued yesterday, and most workshops had already switched to producing the Minié rifle. Of course, the only difference between the new Minié rifle and the Brownbes is that the new Minié rifle has rifling, fires 13mm Minié cartridges, and uses an external percussion cap for firing.
By simply modifying the original flintlock mechanism to make it a percussion-fired mechanism, it is easy to manufacture such a rifle. The difficulty lies in the percussion cap, a small piece of iron that is the key to each firing and is the symbol of the transformation of a musket into a rifle.
The raw material for the percussion cap is mercury fulminate. Even though the chemical industry team had the production method left by Alice, it still took them half a month to develop it. So it wasn't until the new Minié rifle was mass-produced for the first time that it had matching paper-packaged ammunition.
Alice came today to see the manufacture of the new Minié rifle, but the rifle in her hand seemed peculiar; it had a vertical barrel, which Alice knew was where the ammunition was stored.
"Hall rifle."
The Hall rifle was a 19th-century breech-loading firearm that used flintlock or percussion firing, and the one she was holding was clearly a percussion Hall rifle.
Alice looked into the chamber and realized that Marloning had also made a mistake—the airtight seal.
As an early breech-loading rifle, the Hall effect rifle had extremely poor gas tightness, but it was not difficult to improve. All that was needed was to add a brass gas-tight locking device to lock the chamber. However, the barrel was tilted forward at a 45-degree angle, which was actually not conducive to loading. Alice looked at it for ten minutes and then gave her opinion to Marloning.
"The design concept of this gun is not wrong. The breech-loading will indeed greatly increase the rate of fire of the army. You just mentioned that its range is weaker than that of the Minié rifle. This problem comes from the air tightness."
Alice put down the monobar and explained to Marlonin the relationship between airtightness and rifles, but that wasn't why she came today.
On this continent, their enemy is the demon race. The demon race has better physical abilities than humans. Although firearms can still kill them, if a powerful race were to break through to the front lines, Alice would need a simpler but more powerful means of containment than firearms.
Maraning placed two steel pipes on the table. The pipe walls were very thick because there was no technology to manufacture seamless steel pipes at the time, so this was the only option. The inner walls were smooth and not rifled, but a 12-gauge double-barreled shotgun does not require rifling.
Paper-cased shotgun shells and brass shotgun shells were the two types of shotgun shells that the Trian Armory could manufacture. The former was cheaper than the latter, so it became the standard ammunition chosen by Alice.
A 12-gauge double-barreled shotgun can provide soldiers with close-range knockdown firepower, and can also serve as a powerful source of firepower in urban or trench environments.
Manufacturing such a shotgun would require a new production line. Fortunately, the military expansion was not progressing rapidly. Alice immediately instructed Marlonin to divert a production line used for manufacturing Minié rifles to produce shotguns. This year was General Calendar 653, so it was named the M653 Type Mid-folding Double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun.
The Minié rifle was manufactured last fall, while the improved version of the Minié rifle was designated the M652A Minié rifle.
As for the close-range burst firepower urgently needed by officers and elite troops, it had already entered production after the Battle of Kut—the .45 caliber M1851 naval revolver—although it had changed from the .36 caliber of the navy to .45 caliber, it was roughly the same model, named the M653 11.45 mm 6-shot revolver. It was issued to officers and sergeants of various units.
Of course, in addition to firearms, Alice also set a challenge for them. The Trian Fire Factory, a subsidiary factory that was spun off from the Trian Armory, was producing magic crystal black powder on a large scale. Magic crystal research experts from all over the world would gather here from time to time to study magic crystal black powder and even more powerful magic crystal gunpowder.
Some of the black powder produced was used to manufacture a type of man-portable explosive weapon essential for modern warfare—the hand grenade. The grenade body was cast from white cast iron, filled with black powder, and fitted with a wooden handle and a pull fuse. Alice didn't really like wooden-handled grenades. Although they could be thrown farther and could even be used as a hammer in emergencies, their primary function was actually terrible: while the body was large, it had a low charge. A newly manufactured G1 type wooden-handled grenade contained 39 grams of black powder, which was actually not much different from what Alice had called "border region-made" in her previous life.
However, these weapons would undoubtedly greatly increase the vanguard's firepower output. A month later, in the afternoon, Alice, General Smedley, and Maraning arrived by carriage at the Northern National Weapons Testing Ground outside Trian. However, due to a lack of manpower, the so-called Northern National Weapons Testing Ground was just a large area of wasteland surrounded by fences.
Accompanying them, besides a platoon of weapons test soldiers, was a 130mm Dahlgren cannon, also known as the "bottle cannon" due to its tapered shape.
Alice picked up a telescope and looked at the vast wasteland, imagining that in the future, Gasco blast walls, half-body targets, and 1000 mm average steel targets should be erected here. They would not use these muzzle-loading cannons and muskets to test 125 mm smoothbore cannons and Kalashnikovs.
A burst of cannon fire pulled Alice from her thoughts. The massive Dalgren cannon fired a devastating 130mm armor-piercing shell, the barrel moved backward, and then returned to its original position on the gravity-operated mounting, which was a steel right-angled triangle with a slider.
The new artillery and infantry weapons trials were very successful, but production remained low. Alice shook her head.