Volume 1 Tigers in Southeast Asia Chapter 14: Measure the distance before shooting
Chen Jingui had just heard Lin Fei talking about creating a navy and an army. He knew that Lin Fei would have to fight sooner or later, so he was worried that Lin Fei would also send him to the battlefield. He was so scared that his soul left his body and his body was shaking. Now when he heard Lin Fei calling his name, he suddenly felt like a "nightmare come true". He took a few quick steps and knelt down in front of Lin Fei with a "thump". He kowtowed and said, "Captain Lin, please don't let me go to the battlefield! I don't want the three thousand pesos. Please let me go home."
Lin Fei laughed and said, "Who said I'm sending you to the battlefield? Your mission is much more important than going to the battlefield."
Chen Jingui almost fainted when he heard this, thinking to himself: "A mission more important than going to the battlefield must be more terrifying than fighting! It's over, it's over, I'm dead!"
Lin Fei pointed at the natives and said, "Your task is to teach them Chinese. If one of them learns Chinese, I will give you 300 pesos. How about that? Do you agree?"
Chen Jingui calculated that if he could teach a native Chinese for 300 pesos, 200 natives would be 60,000 pesos, which was not enough for him to earn in three years of sugar and wine business! So Chen Jingui kowtowed again and said, "Yes, yes, I will definitely teach these natives Chinese."
Lin Fei said: "Okay, go and prepare. I will let the natives live with us these days. It will be very convenient for them to learn Chinese. Once these natives learn Chinese, we can let them fight with us."
Chen Jingui nodded in agreement, stood up and left. His son Chen Fu said to the side: "Dad, I want to fight too!"
Chen Jingui reached out and hit his son on the back of the head, cursing, "You little bastard, what a fight! Go and teach your father to speak Chinese."
Chen Jingui left with his son, leaving only the brothers that Lin Fei brought out from the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. At this time, Lin Fei took out a ruler from the winery technician from his pocket. Spain at this time, like Japan, used the metric system, so this ruler was also a metric ruler. Lin Fei asked everyone to gather around and said, "Everyone come and look at this ruler."
Everyone gathered around and stared at the ruler, wondering what was so special about it. At this time, Lin Fei said, "Everyone, pay attention. In all future occasions, use meters, centimeters and millimeters as length units. Units such as feet, inches, minutes and feet are not allowed to be used. The scale on this ruler is one millimeter per grid. Everyone, take a good look."
Liu Daming asked, "Is there anything wrong with using the original size?"
Lin Fei thought to himself, "I will definitely design and manufacture various weapons in the future. When I was studying, all units were metric units. I must use metric units for drawing and calculation. If you still use imperial units and municipal units, I will have to convert them, which is too troublesome. Moreover, imperial and municipal units are not as accurate as metric units."
Lin Fei did not explain too much to the crowd, but just said: "The matter here is very complicated. You won't understand if I explain too much, so I will not say more. Now I will assign tasks to everyone. Lao Liu and Lao Yu, take the whaling boat around the island and familiarize yourself with the hydrological conditions. Now that Denison has escaped, there will definitely be a large group of Spaniards coming. We must prepare for a naval battle."
"Old Li, organize the three squads of infantry and take them to the open space west of the sugarcane plantation. I have to teach the brothers how to use guns. Our navy doesn't even have a warship, only a whaler. We can't fight at all. If the Spaniards come, the outcome will have to be decided on land."
Li Mingbai agreed and went to organize the three squads. Yu Xier took this opportunity to whisper to Lin Fei, "Captain, did you do the 'Spring Ancestral Hall, as it was... in the north... to lift the Red Wolf' last night?"
Lin Fei was stunned and asked curiously: "What is all this nonsense? What are you talking about?"
Yu Xier frowned, took out his Chinese culture book and pencil from his pocket, bit the tip of the pencil and said, "Did I recite it wrong?"
Lin Fei snatched away his cultural book, and saw crooked Chinese characters written on it: "Spring thoughts are stirring, and the mandarin ducks are stirring up red waves in the quilt - Liu Yong, Phoenix Resting on the Wutong Tree." It turned out that this was a line from Liu Yong's poem, describing the affairs between men and women. Yu Xier's pronunciation was not very standard, so he said something like that.
Lin Fei didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He threw the book into Yu Xier's arms and scolded him with a smile, "Where did you learn these obscene words and phrases?"
Before Yu Xier could say anything, Liu Daming and his men surrounded him with shining eyes, asking Lin Fei about what happened last night. Lin Fei coughed lightly, turned around and ran away, only to hear Sun Yong shouting from behind: "I don't know what tricks Captain Lin used last night to make that Japanese girl cry..."
Lin Fei led the infantry to the open space in the west. Including Lin Fei himself, there were a total of 38 of them. Each of them had a rifle, 20 bullets, and five magazines. Lin Fei first asked, "When you all served the Qing court, you were all infantrymen. How much do you know about guns?"
Everyone shook their heads. Lin Fei was helpless for a moment, then asked: "Have you ever shot a gun?"
Everyone still shook their heads. Lin Fei thought, I have to start from scratch. Lin Fei raised the gun in his hand and said, "This gun is called Mauser M1893. It was originally made in Germany and copied in Spain." Lin Fei took the gun in his left hand, tucked it under his armpit, pointed at the gun with his right hand and said, "I will start from loading the bullet into the gun chamber."
Lin Fei pulled the bolt with his hand to open the chamber, took out the loaded magazine from his pocket, inserted it into the chamber, pressed the bullet with his right hand, and the bullet entered the magazine with a "clatter". Lin Fei took out the magazine, patted the magazine with his hand, and said: "Look at this iron box next to the chamber, it is the magazine, which can hold five bullets."
Lin Fei stretched out his hand to push the bolt back and said, "Now a bullet is loaded and ready to fire. Do you understand?"
Everyone nodded. Lin Fei pointed to the pin next to the trigger and said, "This is the safety. You can only shoot after turning it on. After we turn on the safety, we can pull the trigger and the bullet will be fired. So now the question is, how can we shoot accurately?"
Everyone was confused and shook their heads. Lin Fei shouted, "Everyone, remember this sentence. Measure the distance before shooting. Don't shoot without measuring! That is to say, before shooting, you must first measure the distance from you to the target! What is the reason for this sentence?"
Lin Fei picked up a stone and threw it out. The stone drew an arc in front of everyone's eyes and fell to the ground with a "click". Lin Fei said: "As you can see, the stone fell to the ground in an arc in the air. The same is true for bullets. After they are shot out of the barrel, they will fall. So if you want to hit the target, the muzzle must be raised upwards. So how high should the muzzle be raised?"
"The height of this lift depends on the ballistic characteristics of the bullet. The ballistic characteristics need to be calculated using mathematics, but we don't need to calculate, because the designer of the gun has already designed a tool for us to determine this height!"
Lin Fei pointed to the vertical circle on the muzzle and said, "This is called the front sight." Then he pointed to the square on the gun body in front of the barrel and said, "This thing with a notch and numbers on the side is called a sight. There is a notch on it and numbers on the side, such as 100, 200, etc., which represent the distance from you to the target. When aiming, look at the notch to the front sight, then look at the target, and connect these three points on the same line."
Lin Fei cleared his throat heavily and said, "Listen carefully, here comes the important part! Since the notch of the rear sight and the sight are not at the same height, the notch of the rear sight is high and the sight is low. If you want to align the notch of the rear sight and the sight in a straight line, the muzzle must be raised. This raised height is the height required to hit the target. Do you understand?"
Everyone nodded, and Lin Fei continued , "You may have discovered that the notch on the rear sight can slide on the numbers, and the height of each number is different. This shows that the muzzle elevation is different at different distances. This goes back to what I just said, measure the distance before shooting, don't shoot without measuring! Only when you are sure of the distance to the target can you accurately set the rear sight."
Lin Fei swallowed his saliva to moisten his sore throat and said, "Let's practice loading bullets and aiming. We'll talk about how to measure the distance after a break. There is one thing to do when practicing. Turn off the safety. If anyone opens the safety and the gun goes off, the lives of the brothers around him will be gone!"
Lin Fei sat down on the ground after he finished speaking. Everyone was practicing enthusiastically and no one looked at Lin Fei. Lin Fei cursed in his heart: "What a bunch of heartless things. I'm talking so much that my mouth is dry and they don't even bother to spit out some water for me! Alas, grown men are just careless. If it were a little girl, it would be fine. When I was an instructor in the women's special forces team, those little girls were very caring..." Thinking of the little girl, Lin Fei naturally thought of Chiyomika, and an indescribable feeling arose in his heart.
After resting for a while, Lin Fei stood up and said, "Now I will teach you how to measure distance." Everyone stood at attention and looked at Lin Fei. Lin Fei then said, "The principle of distance measurement is that the opposite sides of the same angles of similar triangles are proportional..." After saying this, he regretted secretly. How could they understand this!
Lin Fei quickly changed his words and said, "There are many ways to measure distance. I will teach you the simplest one first. Do you see the crosshairs? The width of the crosshairs is known, so you can use the width of the target covered by the crosshairs to judge the distance from the target to you. For example, if half the width of the crosshairs covers the enemy, then the distance from the enemy to you is about 300 meters, so you can use a 300-meter sight."
As Lin Fei was speaking, a sailor ran over and said, panting, "Captain Lin, no... it's bad, the Spanish are coming!"
Lin Fei broke out in a cold sweat and asked in shock, "What did you say?"
