Chapter 10： Karen gun

With the opening of the steel-making open hearth furnace, the steel quality of the East Frisian Lambert cannon has changed substantially. Previously, Marin only let old John and other artillery craftsmen use high-quality wrought iron smelted in a reverberatory furnace. Although the quality is better than that of other European countries, the gun body is not strong enough.

After all, wrought iron is soft, used to cast artillery, toughness is enough, but the wall strength is not enough. Therefore, the artillery needs to be cast very thick.

But now, because of the open hearth, Marin has low-carbon steel, which is more suitable for casting guns. Although, due to technical limitations, Marin's current artisans are not skilled in controlling carbon content, resulting in unstable steel quality. Medium carbon steel is often smelted into low carbon steel, and low carbon steel is often smelted into medium carbon steel ( The quality of high-carbon steel is a good control point. Graphite clay lining can be used, similar to the crucible steelmaking method). But anyway, as long as it is not high carbon steel, it is suitable for casting cannons, much better than wrought iron cannons.

Therefore, after using steel, the gun body can also be "thin" down ...

To this end, Marin assigned the task to the foundry factory-to develop a large-caliber, short-barreled Karen ship gun (also called Karon gun) ...

In fact, Marin has issued a total of two artillery research and development tasks. Old John and his team are mainly responsible for upgrading the original 12-pound wrought iron heavy artillery. Marin's requirement is that the total weight remains unchanged, but the caliber needs to be upgraded from 12 pounds to 18 pounds. In other words, after the upgrade, Old John's iron cannon became an 18-pound "Hongyi Cannon".

The second task is to develop a large-caliber, short-barreled Karen gun. However, this team is not with Old John's team. The main craftsman of this team is the group of local blacksmiths that Marin ran to help old John get started and learn techniques.

Now, a few years later, these blacksmiths can also skillfully cast 12-pound wrought iron guns. This time, Marin separated them separately and set up a new R & D team to start the development of large-caliber, short-barreled Karen guns. After all, Old John is English, not himself. The important thing, Marin still believes more in himself. Therefore, he activated the cannon artisans of his own serfs to engage in Karen artillery.

As a military fan and a nautical fan, Marin couldn't help but know the position of the Karen gun in the British Navy. The close shot within 500 meters of the Karen Cannon was a magic weapon for the Royal Navy to win.

The Karen gun has two major advantages: First, it has a large caliber, can shoot a heavy iron ball, and smash the enemy warships. The larger the iron ball, the more likely it is to destroy the hull of the enemy ship. The Peixan cannon in the mid-19th century is an outstanding representative of them. With a weight of 68 pounds, the shell can easily smash the thickened and reinforced side of the enemy ship.

Although it is said that destroying enemy ships, the Peksang artillery mainly relied on explosive bombs. However, if the enemy ship's side cannot be smashed and exploded inside the enemy ship, the Peksan artillery is not so powerful, and its damage to the battleship is also limited. Therefore, the 68-pound weight of its shells is also very important. The Peiksan cannon is a classic large-caliber, short-barrel heavy gun, which belongs to the upgraded and enhanced version of the Karen gun.

Second, the rate of fire of the Karen gun is fast. The longer the length of the gun, the more difficult it is to load, and it will take longer. At the same time, the long-barreled artillery is too difficult to reset because it is much heavier than the Karen gun of the same caliber.

For example, a 32-pound Karen cannon weighs only 771.8 kg and has a length of only 1.2 meters. The 18-pound "Hongyi Cannon" weighed 2 tons, or 2,000 kilograms, and had a length of about 3 meters.

In other words, the shell weight of a 32-pound Karen cannon is almost twice that of the "Hongyi cannon", but the weight of the cannon is only about one-third of the "Hongyi cannon" ... if it is replaced by a 32-pound long tube Cannon, God knows how many ...

The heavier the gun body, the more difficult the gun is to load, and the reset is also very troublesome. It requires many sailors to help move the gun to reset. The heavier the artillery, the harder it is to reset.

This also led to the fact that it is much easier to reload or reset the cannons of the same caliber. Then, the average rate of fire is naturally higher. Generally speaking, a skilled Royal Navy artillery uses long barrel heavy artillery, it takes at least 2 minutes to fire a shot (Note: Because the environment on board is complicated, the rate of fire is slower than on land. Because, on land The turret artillery does not easily shift, and the recoil is directed to the ground. Instead, it does not need to be reset, saving a lot of time and the rate of fire is higher.). The Karen Cannon can fire one shot in about 1 minute.

……

Although the long-barreled artillery has a longer range. Perhaps the long-barrel artillery is better for bombing land targets, and the coastal defense artillery is also more suitable for the use of long-barrel artillery. However, in naval battles, the range of the long barrel gun is meaningless.

Because the warship as an artillery carrier can't shake because of the wind and waves and the recoil of the artillery on the sea. Especially in the era of wooden boats, the hull is more affected by the sea conditions and swayed more.

The naval gun is sideways. The ship swayed, basically swayed laterally. This is a tragedy, making it impossible for the side artillery to target the enemy ship. You have just aimed the enemy ship, but the hull flicked and the angle of fire immediately changed. The short distance is not obvious, the distance is about long, and the shooting angle changes a little, which will cause a great error.

Therefore, on a rickety warship, the range of the artillery is meaningless. The longer the range, the greater the error ...

Of course, this is at sea. If it is in the Inner River and Inner Lake area, it will be another matter. For example, during the Second Anglo-American War (1812-1814), the inner lake water war on Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, because there were no storms in the inner lake, led to the long-barreled artillery on the American warships. Beyond the gun's range, aim at the British ships to bombard. The British ships were all equipped with Karen guns and had a short range, which could not hit the US ships. When trying to get closer, the American ship ran away, playing the British ship like "flying a kite." Therefore, it is also inappropriate to equip a Karen gun with a short range. Encounter the rogue play of the United States, you may suffer a loss. Of course, when you switch to the Atlantic Ocean, the hull shakes badly, and this insignificant US military tactic is not necessarily useful. On the Neihu Lake, because of the calm and calm waves, the long-barrel artillery fired more accurately.

After this battle, the British finally realized that it was impossible to use only the Karen gun. When you encounter the rogue like Lao Mei, you have to suffer. and so. Later on the British battleship, the Karen and long barrel guns were used together. In close combat, the Karen artillery was used to destroy enemy ships. When the distance is far, you use long-barrel guns to bet against each other ...

However, if the distance is too far above the sea, even if the long-range gun has sufficient range, it can hardly hit. Therefore, when naval battles were carried out, British warships were basically within 500 meters of enemy ships, taking advantage of the Karen artillery.

Even, the Royal Navy has close tactics for shooting. For example, the "Trafalgar Naval Battle" where Nelson was killed was because Nelson's flagship "Victory" and the French battleship "Awe" collided side to side, and even a side-to-side battle occurred. Nelson himself was also shot by French musketeers because of the close proximity.

In short, the closer the naval battle in the era of sail ships, the higher the artillery hit rate. If it's parallel, it's basically a bombardment. At that time, everyone was completely caliber.

But at a long distance, even at a distance of 500 meters, the hit rate of naval guns is surprisingly low, only 10% to 20%. If you hit the bomb from a long distance, you will win even if you hit ...

With the experience of the British Royal Navy, why not use Marin? Therefore, Marin ordered the development of the Karen cannon. In the future naval battles, he must also shoot close, using the Karen cannon's heavy shells and high rate of fire to directly defeat the enemy ship ...

However, Marin did not want to take too much steps to prevent the egg from being pulled. Therefore, Marin asked the newly independent local artisan-based foundry factory ~ www.novelhall.com ~ to develop a 12-pound Karen gun first. When the technology matures, it's developing 18 pounds. Then, by analogy, advance to 24 pounds. Then, march to the most common 32-pound Karon gun ...

Of course, in this era, heavy artillery casting has a very low success rate, generally no success rate of 20%. In other words, the scrap rate is as high as 80%.

But Marin's previous life often went to the forum to know the principle. This is because, in this era, the "Rodman Act" that appeared during the American Civil War has not yet appeared.

The so-called Rodman method is the "controllable cooling technology of internal mold" when casting a gun. Specifically, the cooling rate of the inner wall of the barrel is not slower than its appearance. In the case of natural cooling, it is natural that the outer layer cools first before it reaches the inside. But in this way, because of thermal expansion and contraction, it is easy to cause the outer barrel to shrink first, squeezing the "heat expansion" inner layer, which is easy to cause cracks in the barrel and then lead to scrapping.

Using the "Rodman method" to accelerate the cooling of the inside of the barrel, it is not easy to make the outer layer "tighten" the inner layer, and it is not easy to produce internal cracks. In this way, the casting success rate of heavy artillery has been greatly improved, reaching more than 80%. Moreover, the service life is also longer, even five times that of the old artillery ...

Marin handed over the principles of the "Rodman Method" to the group of cannon craftsmen from his own serf and asked them to cast cannons according to this principle.

Of course, how to make the inner wall of the barrel cool down faster, but Marin only knows the principle, not the process. This point requires artillery craftsmen to fumble for themselves. Once successful, it will be convenient to cast heavy artillery later ...

At that time, the Marin warships will use heavy artillery, all the warships that dare to compete with him for maritime hegemony will be slagged ...