Volume 3: Confrontation! The Run of Civilization Chapter 502 Armaments Coordination Meeting (II)
The history of the development of human rifles, from matchlocks to flintlocks to the earliest breech-loading rifle Mauser 1871, all used black powder. In the historical plane, the first rifle to use smokeless powder was the French Lebel M1886 rifle.
When this rifle was first put into service in the French army, the French army kept it as a top secret. However, the temptation of money could not be resisted, so a French soldier secretly ran to the German position with this rifle and asked the Germans for 20,000 marks for it.
The Germans were surprised when they discovered the secret, and they also urgently started the research and development of their own smokeless powder breech-loading rifle.
At that time, Mauser was mass-producing the Mauser 1871 rifle and was unwilling to abandon its mature production line for the new smokeless powder. Therefore, the first smokeless powder rifle in Germany was taken by the little-known Spandau company: this is the infamous German 1888 Commission Rifle.
On the one hand, this gun was rushed out under pressure from France. On the other hand, the designer was too greedy and put everything on the gun. In addition, the Germans had the inherent problem of striving for perfection in each component, but the overall assembly level was always problematic. As a result, this gun had a lot of problems after it was released: difficulty in loading and unloading, poor shell extraction reliability, easy to explode...
Faced with this rifle with many problems, the German military naturally turned its back on it and refused to continue large-scale purchases. Instead, it begged Mauser to redesign a new rifle. Under pressure from bankruptcy, Spandau sold these guns to the Qing Dynasty, which was in the process of the Westernization Movement. Later, the Hanyang Arsenal of the Qing Dynasty copied this rifle on a large scale. This is the famous rifle in China, which was used from the late Qing Dynasty to World War II for more than 50 years: Hanyang-made, or the old sleeve.
The Lebel M1886 and the old sleeve, as well as the Mauser 98 rifle launched by Mauser later, are all the first generation of rifles using smokeless powder. But even so, they are still more advanced than the rifles used by Ming soldiers now: after all, these three rifles generally use five-round magazines for ammunition. Compared with the Ming soldiers' current practice of shooting one bullet and then reloading one, their firing speed is much faster.
Among these three rifles, the Mauser 98 is epoch-making because it uses a rotating bolt, which is the basic principle followed in rifle design for a long time in later generations.
After the Mauser 98, the most influential rifle in the first two decades of the 20th century was the British Lee Enfield magazine-fed short rifle. This rifle was only 1.13 meters long, but had a ten-round magazine. The short gun body made it easier for soldiers to move in the trenches, and the ten-round magazine greatly increased the speed of firing bullets. Of course, the short gun body will cause the range to decrease. But in fact, in World War I, the effective range of rifles rarely exceeded 400 meters, and there was no need for a very long barrel. It can be said that the Lee Enfield magazine-fed short rifle was the best rifle in World War I.
In the World War II era, rifles once again underwent revolutionary changes: the American M1 Garand rifle, 1.1 meters long, gas-operated automatic loading, rotary locking bolt. It uses 7.62mm rifle bullets and has an 8-round magazine capacity. This is the world's first semi-automatic rifle, which can fire eight rounds in five seconds. Its firepower is so strong that in the Pacific War, it beat the Japanese army, who could only fire five rounds in fifteen seconds with a Type 38 rifle, to a pulp.
After the semi-automatic rifle, the next step is naturally the fully automatic rifle.
In the 1960s, when Americans confidently entered the Vietnam battlefield with the M14 Garand rifle, a modified version of the M1, the situation was the opposite of that in the Pacific War: Vietnamese soldiers armed with AK47 assault rifles beat the Americans to a pulp.
The research and development basis of the AK47 rifle is the world's first fully automatic rifle: the German STG44 assault rifle. In World War II, it was this rifle that announced the demise of the PPSh, which had just reached the pinnacle of submachine guns.
Unlike submachine guns, which generally use pistol bullets and do not require range, accuracy and power, but only require a wide range of firepower. Rifles have requirements for range, accuracy and power. However, in order to meet these requirements, before the gunpowder formula is further improved, the bullet must be very long and the recoil is extremely large. The excessive recoil is one of the fundamental reasons why rifles cannot fire for a long time and fully automatically like submachine guns.
During World War II, the Germans made progress in ammunition research and proposed the theory of short-cartridge intermediate-power bullets: the initial velocity and accuracy of this bullet were not as good as those of ordinary rifle bullets, but the reduced recoil solved the problem that rifles could not fire continuously like submachine guns. The range, accuracy and power of intermediate-power bullets were much better than those of submachine guns that used only pistol bullets. So the STG44 assault rifle came into being: in actual combat, it completely suppressed the PPSh.
After World War II, the Soviets, who had obtained all the technical data of the STG44 assault rifle, developed the AK47 fully automatic assault rifle based on it. This gun has achieved great success and received countless praises. In the later movie "Lord of War", with "Swan Lake" as the background music, a line recited by Nicolas Cage can be regarded as the best praise for this gun:
It is the most popular automatic rifle in the world, a soldier's favorite weapon, made of 9 pounds of forged steel and 4 feet of wood. It won't break, jam, or overheat. It can be covered in mud and sand and still fire normally. It is so simple to use that even a child can use it, and they do use it. The Soviets printed it on the ruble, and Mozambique put it on its flag. Since the Cold War, it has become Russia's main export...
The Americans, who were beaten badly by the AK47 in the Vietnam battlefield, soon came up with their own fully automatic assault rifles based on the theory of short-casing intermediate-power bullets: this is the famous M16 in shooting games such as Counter-Strike (the M4A1 is a derivative of this gun family). The Soviet Union came up with the AK74. Later, China also had its own Type 95 assault rifle - traditional rifles have disappeared from the major powers on the earth, and the world has entered the era of assault rifles.
In short, in the field of gun research and development, the research and development of bullets must be ahead of the guns themselves. Only with good bullets can the guns be improved.
Of course, as in the historical plane, the diameter of the ammunition for M16, AK74 and even China's Type 95 has been reduced to less than 6mm (NATO 5.6, Warsaw Pact 5.45, China 5.8), and the power and accuracy can still be guaranteed. This is of course due to the improvement of the overall technological level in later generations. In this era when the technology tree is growing in strange shapes, don't think about semi-automatic and fully automatic assault rifles for the time being: because Zhu Youdong doesn't know the history of the development of firearms at all, and even if he knows, he doesn't know what an intermediate power bullet is. These can only be slowly advanced through actual combat and the accumulation of Daming technology itself.
"Hmm..." After listening to Cao Wenzhao's opinion, Zhao Shizhen stroked his long beard and said, "Yuanhua, Maokang, what do you think?"
"Teacher." Sun Yuanhua stood up. "The power of the ammunition in my gunpowder laboratory has been improved again. If the barrel is shortened by 10 to 20 centimeters, it should not have much impact on the range of the rifle. In addition, the diameter of my Ming Dynasty rifle bullet is currently 7.92mm. After the power of gunpowder is improved, we can consider reducing it to 7.6mm. With the reduction in diameter and the shortening of the barrel, the initial velocity of the bullet will naturally decrease, and the penetration will be weakened. The bullet will not penetrate the human body, and staying in the human body will cause greater damage to the enemy soldiers."
"Mr. Zhao." Bi Maokang also stood up. "Don't worry about the final assembly. After the barrel is shortened, I will be responsible for coordinating and improving the other bolt structures. In addition, the problem of magazine feeding is not difficult to solve. I think we should try a five-round magazine first, feeding from the top. After the military tries it out, we will see if they are satisfied and if there is anything that needs to be improved."
"Okay." Nodding, Zhao Shizhen turned around and said, "General Cao, how about this? A new rifle with a five-round magazine and a shorter barrel of 1.2 meters or 1.15 meters. Fangshan will first make a dozen or so, and then finalize the design and mass production after the military tests them."
"Okay, thank you all." Cao Wenzhao bowed and thought for a moment, "In this operation, the soldiers ' response to pistols and grenades was quite good. The army has no new requirements for these two items for the time being."
"Okay." Ma Chengzhao, who was presiding over the meeting, knocked on the table gavel: "So, what about the navy?"
Yan Siqi stood up and said, "In this battle, although our army had fewer first-class warships and the second-class warships were fixed at the mouth of the bay, we must admit that the Westerners have been sailing the ocean for hundreds of years. Afterwards, we analyzed that even if the number of sailing warships was equal and the fighting conditions were the same, we dare not say that we are completely sure of winning. Therefore, the victory of this naval battle was basically decided by the ironclad ships."
"Yes." Li Guozhu stood up: "This battle made our navy clearly see that the era of sailing warships has passed. In front of ironclad ships, no matter how powerful the sailing warships are, they are just chickens and pottery dogs. Therefore, the navy has two requirements. First, ironclad ships, huge cannons, high speeds, and high resistance. Second, in this decisive battle of ironclad ships, our army actually won a bit unfairly. The most fundamental factor is that the opponent is a long expedition. One ship's engine has always had problems, and one ship has too many underwater barnacles, and it has never been able to run at the highest speed. In this way, we barely won. Even so, during the battle, our cannons hit so many guns on the opponent's deck, but still couldn't sink it... If it weren't for the opponent's Casti's basic loss of mobility, our army would not be able to hit the opponent's waterline at all. And it was the shell that hit the opponent's waterline that completely determined the outcome of the battle. Therefore, the second requirement of the navy is that we need a weapon that can specifically attack the enemy ship below the waterline."
