CH 264

Chapter 264 – Harpy-san’s Heavy Bombardment Project

I had already proposed the development of enhanced equipment for harpies, especially arrow repellents using wind magic barriers at the Research and Development Department, so I contacted Merinesburg to have 50 of them, including spares, deployed by spring.

As for the other changes to heavy bombers and armor, it would be too much for me to develop them on my own, so I sent a document with my ideas to the Research and Development Department in Merinesburg and asked them to study them in the back.

There are several approaches to the development of heavy bombers. One is the downsizing of air bombs, and the other is the development of bomb supports―pylons―to be mounted on the legs and torso. Currently, we are using a type of air bomb in which the bomb is held directly by Harpy-san’s legs, and by wrapping a string connected to a fuse around the legs, the fuse is activated, and the bomb explodes at the same time as it is transmitted.

Due to the nature of the direct grip with the legs, the maximum number of bombs that can be simultaneously equipped is two, one for each leg. However, if the bombs can be made smaller so that multiple bombs can be suspended on pylons and launched, the amount of firepower projected per sortie will be dramatically increased. If the bombs could be made smaller without compromising the attack power per bomb, and if each leg could carry three bombs, the firepower projection per person would be tripled.

“So I need your help to build the new bombs and the pylons to support them.”

“”Yes!”””

The gathered harpies cheerfully reply. It’s good that they do, but there are a little too many of them. There are about ten of them. Well, well, is there anything better than a large sample?

“Um, first of all, I’d like to see your legs. Do they all have the same shape?”

“Hmm? I don’t know. I haven’t paid much attention to it.”

With that, the brown-feathered harpy Pessar turned her gaze to her own legs. Yes, they are much bigger than the ones I know, but they are just like bird’s feet. They support their bodies with four toes. They have three toes in the front and one toe in the back, and they use these four toes to grasp objects.

“Can you move them dexterously?”

“Hmm? Like this?”

Pessar shows me how to open and close the toes. I don’t know how real birds do it, but at least they seem to be able to move each toe freely. It seems they can move their toes quite dexterously.

“Hmm… I see. Can you hold my arm for a moment?”

“Sure!”

I squatted down at her feet and held out my arm. She dexterously stood on one leg, balancing on her wings, and grabbed my arm with the other leg.

“Can you put a little bit of pressure on it?”

“Yes. If it starts to hurt, just let me know, okay?”

Pessar begins to put more pressure on her toe. Oh, she has a pretty strong grip, doesn’t she? Well, otherwise, she wouldn’t be able to fly with the air bomb, which weighs a certain amount, would she?

“Okay, now I’m going to touch your toes and see if you can make them stronger, okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

I touch each of Pessar’s toes one by one as she grabs my arm. Hmm, it is possible to strengthen each finger individually, I thought.

“Okay. By the way, if you had to put more pressure on just one finger, which one would be the easiest?”

“This finger, I guess.”

It seemed to be the toe at the center of her body that was squeezing my arm. Or should I say the inner toe?

“Is it the same for everyone? No, wait, why are you surrounding me?”

After completing the mysterious ritual of having my arms grabbed and nibbled by everyone, I discovered that the harpies’ legs are surprisingly dexterous and strong in their grip. Well, I heard that they could stay up all night holding onto a tree branch or something, so I guess it is only natural.

“Well, if that’s the case, the mechanism seems to be like pulling a trigger.”

If the harpies could pull the trigger with their toes, then the firing device, or rather the projectile device, should be of the trigger type. The rest is the shape…

“It’s simple to make.”

“It doesn’t look cool.”

“Pessar’s casual comment hurt my feelings…”

I wrote on paper a grip with a trigger, surrounded by a metal frame in a square, with four small bombs attached to the frame. Looking at the grip and frame from above, it’s shaped like a ‘sun.’ One bomb would be attached to each of these tops, bottom, left, and right sides and each pull of the trigger would cause the bombs to be dropped in a clockwise direction.

“Well, if I were to do it, I would probably use a garter belt-like brace to support both the waist and the legs. If a large number of bombs are loaded at the feet, and the weight is unbalanced, it may become underweight instead of top-heavy. Or maybe we should make the projectile device a trigger type and put it on the thigh?”

“On the thigh? What’s it like?”

Capri, a brown-feathered harpy like Pessar, said this and tilted her head. I wonder if Capri is from a good upbringing or from far away, she speaks in a Kansai dialect. It’s a bit elegant or Kyoto-esque. I’m just prejudiced. It’s the same Kansai dialect, but it’s different, isn’t it?　I don’t know much about it, though.

“I think it would be good to put three or four bombs of this size on the outside of the thigh, like this.”

I put a 500ml plastic water bottle on Capri’s thigh.

“In this case, you put four of them here, right?”

“Yes. Which one is easier to carry?”

“Well, I think it’s easier for me to fly with the one on my thigh.”

“That’s right. Rather than hanging heavy things under my legs, it would be easier to fly if they were attached to my thighs.”

The other harpies were also of the opinion that it was easier to fly if it was attached to the thigh.

“The metal frame or perhaps a rail is hung from the belt at the waist, and it is further secured to the thigh with a belt; three or four new bombs are attached to the rail like this, and they are dropped one by one by pulling the trigger with the leg. It would be even better if we could attach an arrow-repellent device using wind magic to this waist belt.”

I don’t know what the size or specifications of the wind magic tool will be, but it won’t be that big as long as it is equipped on the harpy. 

“Yeah, this one looks cooler.”

“Well, is the productivity that much different?”

The structure is simpler to use three or four triggers to fire one shot at a time than to use three or four triggers to fire three or four ejection mechanisms. The amount of metal used is not so different, and above all, there is no need for bending or welding. In fact, this might be more productive.

“The direction of the pylon seems to be good. Now, all we need is a new bomb…”

This is also very difficult. Basically, the power of a bomb depends on the amount of explosives. In other words, the bigger the bomb, the more powerful it is. Usually, the smaller the bomb is, the less powerful it becomes. It is quite difficult to reduce the size of a bomb without reducing its power.

“Even if the power of a single shot is a little lower, the total firepower will increase if the amount of bombs installed increases from six to eight times, right?”

Right now, we are using the largest and most powerful bombs possible because we can only equip two bombs, and the current air bombs are a bit over-specified when considered for anti-personnel use.

The large bombs we are using now are useful for anti-material use, but for anti-personnel use, eight bombs that kill three to four people instantly and injure 15 are better than two bombs that wipe out ten people without leaving any trace and injure 20.

“I wonder what the design of the new air bomb will look like.”

“It’s kind of different from what we’ve seen so far, isn’t it?”

“I just came up with the idea of diverting shells from other new weapons.”

Yes. This one is an improved version of the infantry mortar shell I was making the other day. The propellant was removed from the mortar shell, and the operation of the warhead fuse was simplified so that the shell could be fired simply by pulling the pin on the warhead. Almost all parts of mortar shells can be used as they are.

Isn’t this idea brilliant?

“Well, the previous air bombs had been improved upon and had a weight of nearly 4 kg per bomb. These new bombs weigh about 1.3 kg each, so even with three bombs per leg, the weight is about the same as before. If you include the pylons, the total weight will go up a little, but since the entire lower body will be used to support the bombs, I think the burden will be less than before.”

“I see. It is smaller than before, but it is great that you can fly with that much weight.”

“I like the fact that I can carry three or four times as much as I used to! So, when can we start using it?”

“Well, no, it’s still in the planning stages…”

However, as for the air bombs for the harpy, I’m basically going to do everything from development to manufacturing. Pessar and Capri, who can be called veteran members of the Harpy bomb squadron, know that I can make them right away if I want to.

“Okay, okay. I’ll make it right away. I’ll make it.”

“Yay! I’m looking forward to it.”

“Pessar and I can’t do it because we are small breeders, but I’m sure all of the medium and large breeders can carry more.”

“I think it would be a good idea to make a separate one for medium-sized and large breeds. Everyone wants to go boom, boom, boom!”

Yes, yes. The projectile launcher would need to be modified, but at best, it would be able to alternate between two hard points with a single trigger, so it wouldn’t cost much. The rails just need to be extended. I’ll do it.

Thus, new anti-personnel air bombs and heavy bomb-loading frames (commonly known as “fashionable clothes” in harpy) will be deployed in the northern area of Harpy Bomber Command, doubling or tripling the anti-personnel firepower of each harpy.

Author Note:

The Harpies: “If we drop bombs side by side, we can take out the enemy without any loss, don’t you think? Also, exploding them would be good, but burning them would be better, too, wouldn’t it?”

Kosuke: “Carpet bombing… incendiary bombs…! (white eyes).”