GBP Chapter 30 12-pound Mountain Howitzer
Chapter 30 12-pound Mountain Howitzer
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More than a month later, with the Lunar New Year's Eve approaching, Liu Ye gave all the factories a holiday, leaving only the guard team to take turns on duty.
Compared to the difficult end of the year in previous years, the villagers of Lijia Village are happy. The salt field is no longer a shackle on their heads, but instead brings them considerable income. In addition, most of the villagers either work in the salt field or have joined the guard team, and their wages are also very high. The whole village has jumped from the lowest level in Lingao County to the richest village in the county.
Since the artisans from the original Tiaolou Village moved their entire families to Bofu, their income is much higher and more stable than before, giving them a greater sense of security compared to the days when they didn't know where their next meal would come from.
The blacksmith from Guangzhou is very satisfied with his current life. He can earn a living with his skills without worrying about his employer deducting his wages or being conscripted by the government to make guns and cannons. His income is at least four times higher than it was in Guangzhou.
Everyone in the system was content with their current lives, and filled with hope that things would get better in the coming year. They welcomed the eve of the Lunar New Year. From Lijia Village to Liujiazhuang, from Bofu to Bairentan, firecrackers were set off everywhere. The tables on every household's table were much more lavish than the previous year, and everyone had a joyful New Year's Eve.
After the New Year, Liu Ye found Liang Xiaoming and said, "I'm telling you, Engineer Liang, the arsenal is all in production, but we still only have guns and no cannons. I'm going to fight a war, and I'm going to panic if I don't have any cannons in my hands! You can at least get me a couple of small cannons to bolster my courage. I'm going to attack someone's mountain stronghold, not to fight on flat ground."
Liang Xiaoming laughed and said, "You're using an 18th-century flintlock musket to bully bandits who only have knives, why would you need a cannon? It's like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut! Besides, I'm planning to wait for the coke to arrive and then work on a standardized cannon casting process, following the same steps as making rifles. The time isn't right yet."
However, seeing Liu Ye's urgent need for cannons, Liang Xiaoming thought for a moment and replied, "Okay, I also want to try the graphitization annealing process first, so I'll treat it as practice."
According to Liang Xiaoming's plan, without coke, the furnace temperature would not be high enough to produce qualified gray cast iron. And he could not tolerate the Ming army using brittle and hard white cast iron to cast cannons.
The properties of white cast iron meant that cast cannons could not be boring and polished, resulting in a rough and uneven inner wall. To successfully propel the cannonball, the diameter of the cannonball had to be made much smaller than the cannon barrel caliber. However, this excessive clearance led to poor airtightness, wasting most of the thrust from the burning gunpowder. Such cannons were neither far-reaching nor accurate. Moreover, white cast iron was too brittle, and combined with the air pockets created by traditional clay casting, the cannon barrel was prone to bursting.
As for the graphitization annealing process, it involves casting a small-diameter, thin-walled cannon barrel from white cast iron, and then annealing it to obtain a cannon barrel made of malleable cast iron. This barrel can then be machined with cutting tools to make the inside and outside of the barrel smooth and even. This allows the shells to be made closer to the barrel caliber, with less clearance, resulting in greater thrust from the same amount of gunpowder, and enabling the cannon to fire farther and more accurately.
As for the method of manufacturing cannon barrels, Liang Xiaoming decided to adopt the iron mold casting method of Gong Zhenlin in the late Qing Dynasty.
Gong Zhenlin was a contemporary of Lin Zexu and Wei Yuan, possessing innovative ideas and a keen interest in Western learning, including mathematics and firearms. During the First Opium War, the British invaded, and the Qing army suffered repeated defeats. Zhejiang Province established an artillery bureau to urgently cast new cannons, appointing Gong Zhenlin to oversee the process. Previously, cannons were cast using clay molds. These molds required a long time to dry, taking about a month from start to finish. Gong Zhenlin's oversight coincided with winter, with continuous rain and snow preventing the clay molds from drying and hindering cannon production. He proposed using iron molds to cast iron cannons, and under his supervision, a trial production was quickly successful, significantly accelerating the cannon manufacturing process.
Compared to clay molds, iron molds have the advantages of being reusable, reducing casting time and costs; iron molds do not contain moisture, so they do not produce air bubbles like clay molds, which would leave pores on the cannon body, reducing the chance of barrel explosion; moreover, cannons cast from iron molds are smooth inside and out. At the time, the Qing Dynasty praised Gong Zhenlin's cannons cast from iron molds as "smooth and agile, no less than those of the West," with craftsmanship approaching that of Western powers.
The specific process is as follows: First, an iron mold is made, which is also cast from a clay mold. A clay cannon model is made according to the size of the cannon barrel to be manufactured. The clay cannon is then divided into two halves. The inner surface is spun smooth and regular, dried, and molten iron is poured in. The two halves of the iron mold are then joined together to obtain the casting iron mold. When casting the cannon using the iron mold, a coating made of fine rice husk ash, fine sand, and water is first brushed onto the inner surface of the mold. Then, a second layer of coating made of extremely fine coal powder is applied. The iron mold is then tightened, heated, and the clay core is assembled before molten iron is poured in. After solidification, the iron mold is immediately removed. While the cannon body is still red-hot, burrs are removed, the clay core is cleaned, and the finished product is obtained.
Before making the clay cannon model, Liang Xiaoming asked Liu Ye for his opinion: "There are many kinds of small cannons. Which kind do you want to make?"
Liu Ye asked, "Can you recommend some of the most famous ones? They need to be for field use, with good mobility, sufficient power, and easy transport."
When discussing famous cannons from the smoothbore era, Liang Xiaoming spoke with great familiarity: "According to the artillery standards of the Napoleonic era, the artillery systems of Britain and France were the most complete. British naval guns were superior to those of France, while French land-based field guns were superior to those of Britain. I personally suggest that land warfare adopt French field guns, eliminating the 3-pounder cannons which had too little firepower. Howitzers and mortars were not the mainstream in the black powder era, so the remaining choice is the Napoleonic cannon."
Finally chose
After machining, the gun barrel is complete. All that's needed is to install the gun mount and the front trailer to make it a complete artillery piece.
Liang Xiaoming said to Liu Ye, "Reporting to the boss, the main body of the two 12-pound mountain howitzers for testing is complete. They have a caliber of 117 mm, a length of 0.96 meters, and a weight of 100 kilograms. Please inspect them."
Liu Ye looked at the smooth, steel-like cannon barrel in front of him, about a meter long and exceptionally lightweight, and was very satisfied. He punched Liang Xiaoming, "Mingzi, you're so amazing, why don't you just fly to the sky? Do you have all the data for these cannons engraved in your head? You're practically a human computer! Don't tell me your major teaches this stuff?"
Liang Xiaoming chuckled twice. "Ever since middle school, I've been fascinated by warships from the Age of Sail and weapons from the Napoleonic era. I often go on forums to exchange ideas and discuss with others. I can recite the specific parameters of these famous muskets and cannons by heart. Not only that, we also discuss on the forums the essential survival skills and money-making tools we need after transmigrating. Gunpowder, flintlock muskets, and muzzle-loading cannons are all required courses. Besides that, I can also make soap and glass. Can you believe it?"
Liu Ye's eyes widened: "How bored must you science guys be to research this? Seriously, you can really make soap? That can't be that exaggerated."
"Soap is actually very simple. You just burn hardwood to get alkali, add animal fat, like lard, and some plant-derived fragrances, and after cooling, you have basic soap. The concentration of caustic soda is crucial; it needs to be high enough that an egg can float. However, these days, animal fat is too expensive, making a bar of soap too costly, so it became a luxury item. Ordinary people used soapberries, and making soap didn't generate any profit." Liang Xiaoming said enthusiastically, "Actually, we're located in Qiongzhou, which has high-quality quartz sand. We could consider making glass. Before I time-traveled, I downloaded a complete set of methods for making flat glass and glassblowing. Give me some time, and I'm sure I can put the theory into practice, make glass, and open up new sources of income!"
“Glass is a good product, it can be sold as a luxury item! Right now, all the glass in the Ming Dynasty comes from Europe, and it’s ridiculously expensive. We have an advantage in transportation costs, so we can crush the Italians.” Liu Ye said, stroking his chin. “But I still think you guys are really bored, researching time travel all the time. Now look what’s happened, I’ve actually time-traveled. Am I being dragged down by you? If you hadn’t gotten on my bus, I would still be the CEO of my company!”
Liang Xiaoming couldn't refute this statement. Maybe he really had dragged the other person down with him. The other person couldn't be a good rich and handsome man and ended up as a peasant entrepreneur in the Ming Dynasty. So he changed the subject: "Ahem, this cannon is ready. Do you want to give it a try?"
Although he knew the other person was trying to change the subject, Liu Ye was still successfully led into the conversation: "Absolutely, let's go, let's go have some fun!"
"Hit a cannon?" The Chinese language is profound and rich in meaning; this is a word with a wide range of connotations. The rich, handsome, and nerdy guy both revealed slightly lewd smiles.
The test firing took place at the firing range used for flintlock muskets. Since it was only testing the basic data of the artillery, Liang Xiaoming did not choose the maximum range, but instead piled up a two-meter-high and three-meter-wide mound of earth at about three hundred meters. The gun mount was on a temporary fixed mount, and the barrel with trunnions could be adjusted in position. It was equipped with sights such as the front sight and rear sight to help the gunner aim.
Liu Ye asked Lin Weiye uncertainly, "I heard that artillerymen need to understand ballistics and also learn trigonometric functions. Is that true?"
Liang Xiaoming scoffed: "Only an ignorant idiot would have such an idea. It's only necessary when artillery has developed to the point of beyond-visual-range attack and possesses modern observation and aiming technology. Muzzle-loading smoothbore cannons can only attack within the range of the naked eye, usually no more than a few hundred meters. Do you really need to use some damn trigonometric functions? Besides, cannons mainly use direct fire as their means of attack, with a low trajectory. What use is your knowledge of ballistics? Howitzers and mortars do use parabolic attacks, but it's all about luck, and the accuracy is appalling. In this era, aiming artillery is no different from aiming a gun. It's just the rear sight and front sight, three points in a line, judged by the naked eye. You can also use a simple quadrant to calculate the muzzle angle. Other than that, even if you learn calculus, it's useless."
Liu Ye felt relieved. He had previously worried that training qualified artillerymen would be too difficult, but now it seemed easy; firing more cannons would train good artillerymen.
After Liang Xiaoming aimed the cannon at the mound, he quickly estimated the distance, then lowered the angle, inserted the pre-loaded gunpowder pack into the muzzle, then inserted a solid shot, compacted it with a rod, pierced the gunpowder pack at the bottom of the barrel through the ignition hole, inserted a matchlock rope, lit it, and stepped back a few paces.
The exposed part of the matchlock quickly burned out, and sparks entered the ignition hole. A moment later, a loud bang came from the barrel. With a "boom," the shell flew out of the muzzle under the thrust of the gunpowder, flying towards the target in a relatively straight trajectory. It hit the mound about two meters to the right front, kicking up a large cloud of dust, then bounced up and continued forward, hitting the ground twice before disappearing into a patch of grass.
Although the guards watching had all been baptized by rifles and had a certain tolerance for firearms, the power of artillery was far beyond what rifles could match, and they all turned pale.