Chapter 636： Change gun

The war is about to erupt. In addition to urging localities to step up spring cultivation, Marin is constantly adjusting the tactical tactics against the British army and replacing some weapons.

The English army is very different from the army on the European continent, so Marin needs to change some tactics. For example, with the matchlock unit, Marin intends to equip the frontline matchlock players with chest armor and helmets. Because, during the battle, the huge number of longbowmen in England will definitely "fall like rain." If you don't wear chest plate armor and helmet, it is easy to be shot into a hedgehog by the English Longbowmen. Because the firing rate of the matchlock gunman is far behind the rate of fire of the English Longbowmen.

In addition to the first three rows of musketeers and lancers wearing chest plate armor and iron helmets, the soldiers in the back row, Marin also intends to issue iron helmets. This is because the English Longbowmen like to shoot, and the chance of an arrow hitting the head is great. In order to prevent excessive casualties, Marin allocated a large number of helmets from other armies for use by the English Expeditionary Force.

In addition, Marin has begun to systematically replace musketeers for musketeers. That is, the old Muskete muskets used by Musketeers were gradually replaced with more advanced clockwork muskets.

Since Da Vinci and others have made simple carbon spring steel, it is easier to build the spring and the spring. The elasticity and toughness of spring steel is more suitable for creating a spring. The emergence of this kind of material has made the clockwork a lot and the yield rate has improved a lot.

Before the appearance of spring steel, Italian craftsmen built springs, generally by repeatedly heating and pounding a pig iron rod, and during heating forging, the impurities in the pig iron were removed to make it transition from pig iron to steel-this is a physical Process (in ancient China, this is the so-called "forging pig iron into fine iron" process, which required a lot of effort and materials). For a long time, this iron rod was finally forged into a slender "iron ruler". At this time, this "iron ruler" can no longer be regarded as pig iron. Because, in the heating forging, many carbon elements are consumed, reducing the carbon content of the pig iron, so that the iron ruler becomes a steel ruler.

Then, the craftsman heats this "iron ruler" at high temperature. After heating, it is bent and fixed on a fixed workbench, and it is difficult to wind into a roll. Then, put it in the annealing furnace for stress relief annealing.

But the premise is-that "steel ruler" has no problem. Because it is purely hand-forged to remove carbon, it is difficult to control the carbon content of the steel ruler. After all, it is difficult to control the quality by removing carbon by hot forging. Therefore, the use of pig iron bars to create the spring has a very low yield rate, generally less than 10%. Among them, the most difficult part is to hot forge the pig iron rod into a steel ruler with suitable carbon content. Only a steel ruler of good quality is suitable for clockwork ... The subsequent bending and annealing process is not complicated. Therefore, such a low yield (this is still the yield of skilled craftsmen), resulting in high spring prices.

Moreover, even if you know how the clockwork is made, it is difficult to build success without the craftsmen who have been immersed in this way for many years. Because it is too difficult to control the carbon content of the iron rule by manual hot forging, which requires extremely rich experience.

However, after Marin made the ordinary carbon spring steel, the biggest problem in manufacturing the spring, the material problem, was directly solved.

Therefore, the first stage, which is extremely difficult for the craftsmen, the stage of forging iron rulers, was directly replaced with cast iron rulers. Then, simply forge for a while (in order to make the structure of the steel ruler more compact), it can be used to wind up the spring ...

After repeated experiments by craftsmen, Marin found that after using spring steel, the process of spring construction became simple, and the yield rate was less than 10% from the hot forging using pig iron rods, reaching more than 80% ...

So, the manufacturing cost and manufacturing time of the spring have been greatly reduced ...

Of course, this process took a long time, and the craftsmen did it after repeated verification. Just when Marin was busy presiding over spring cultivation, the clockwork foundry came to confess.

Marin is naturally overjoyed, and the mainspring cost is greatly reduced, which means that the cost is greatly reduced. In this way, the large-scale installation of clockwork lighters is ready.

Of course, Marin did not forget to keep it secret. After rewarding those craftsmen with heavy money, those craftsmen and their families were moved into a small town dedicated to the secrecy unit. This is somewhat similar to the military industrial units established by the Republic in the mountains and deserts of the Midwest. The confidentiality is very good. Moreover, people in this era have very low requirements for spiritual and cultural life. As long as they are fed and clothed every day, those craftsmen and their families will be satisfied.

After calculation, after applying spring steel and new spring production technology, the cost of the spring has been reduced by about 7 times. Although the cost of a clockwork flare gun is still much higher than that of a matchlock gun, the significance is very significant.

Why? The use of firearms makes the use of firearms inconvenient. In order to prevent Mars on the matchline from igniting the gunpowder of his comrades in arms, in the Spanish phalanx, the distance between the matchlock gunmen must be 1 meter. Otherwise, there will be major security risks.

Each musketeer is one meter away from each other, which really enhances safety. However, the shooting density is also reduced. After all, at the 1 meter interval in the middle, a musketeer could soon be plugged in.

Therefore, after the flintlock gun replaced the matchlock gun, because they are all smoothbore guns, although the range has not changed, the shooting density of the musketeers has increased greatly.

Even, flintlock musketeers can achieve a high-density three-row volley style of "stand in the back row, bend over in the middle, and squat in the front row." Even if the musket's hit rate is very low, the hit rate is also very high when the three-row musketeers only shoot together.

The clockwork musket is the same as the flint rifle, without the use of a fire rope, so it does not matter to maintain a distance of 1 meter from each other. Therefore, if you use a clockwork lighter on a large scale, you can also use a high-density queue fire like a flintlock. In this way, the lethality of the musketeer will be improved to a certain extent.

Another point is-the clockwork lighter is not afraid of wind and rain. As long as you pay attention to shielding the gunpowder from the rain when loading the bomb, you can completely expose the gun to the wind and rain when shooting ...

Historically, the black knight was relying on the characteristics of the clockwork rifle and not afraid of the wind and rain, and fleeed the French knight.

The reason why Marin replaced the musketeers with clockwork muskets is to increase the shooting density and prevent rainy weather.

The weather in England is different from Germany, because facing the warm current of the Atlantic Ocean, the climate of England is relatively humid and it often rains. Once it rains, the matchlock will be completely scrapped and become a burning stick. (In fact, Ireland is really facing the North Atlantic warm current, so the western part of the island of Ireland is very humid, and the rain is too unsuitable for agriculture. It can only be grazed ~ www.novelhall.com ~ Only the eastern rain "shadow area", which is near Dublin It is suitable for agriculture. The island of England is suitable for agriculture because of the Irish island blocking the water vapor in the Atlantic Ocean. But even so, England has more rain than Germany and the climate is more humid.)

If defending the city, Marin can also make a shooting canopy on the city wall to help the matchlock gun to shield the wind from the rain. But now Marin is the offensive party, the army needs to move frequently, and there is no condition to shoot the canopy at all, and it is not convenient to carry. Therefore, a firearm that is not afraid of wind and rain and can increase the firing density, such as a clockwork firearm, is the best choice.

However, because of the high manufacturing cost, Marin only equipped the black knight troops and did not equip the infantry musketeers. Now that the technical problems of cost and rapid mass production have been solved, Marin decided to explode production capacity, mass-produce clockwork firearms, and fully replace the firearm guns.

It's just that it takes a certain amount of time. After all, it takes time to create a clockwork. Therefore, of the 20,000 troops that attacked England this time, only the musketeers of the First Army (that is, the old main force of Marin) began to change their clockwork to fire muskets. As for the English army in Saqqara, the musket equipment rate was not high, and there were still many archers. Therefore, it is temporarily forbidden to change the clockwork torch. Besides, because of the urgent time, Marin couldn't bring out enough clockwork to replace the English Legion with a spring gun ...

With enough chest plate armor and iron helmets to resist bows and arrows, and enough clockwork muskets that are not afraid of wind and rain and can increase the shooting density, Marin feels that there should be no problem with the seven thousand English long archers in front Well, even in rainy and foggy weather in England ...