Chapter 155: Rifles and Cannons

One kilogram of mercury yielded roughly 1.2 kilograms of fulminate—a result that satisfied the Chemistry Group immensely. After all, each percussion cap required only the most minuscule amount.

The caps themselves were best made of copper, and since the transmigrators had brought none with them, the Guangzhou Forward Station purchased large quantities of Japanese red-copper ingots. These were highly sought after because they contained considerable silver, and extracting it would offset the copper purchase costs nicely. The Metallurgy Group refined the ingots down to high-purity copper while recovering the silver as a bonus. With materials secured, the Mechanical Group designed and built a specialized stamping machine, manufactured the dies, and powered the whole apparatus electrically—pressing ten caps per cycle.

Once batch production was confirmed, rifle assembly began in earnest. These Minié ball muzzle-loaders used 14mm alloy steel seamless tubes sourced from a pre-departure purchase of high-pressure boiler pipes. Before leaving, they had secretly machined 48-centimeter lengths with five-groove rifling at Zhan Wuya's machine shop. Hammers, triggers, and springs had also been stamped from alloy steel plate there. Without this preparation—had they been forced to machine their own rifling from scratch—they would barely have rifles now. The New Army would have been stuck with Brown Besses instead.

Smoothbores had their champions among line-infantry purists, of course. Wang Luobin was a line-infantry enthusiast himself, but he wasn't fundamentalist enough for that. True purists absolutely rejected rifled muskets on principle.

Yet rifled muskets were hardly new. Even the flintlock era had produced rifled specimens. Compared to smoothbores, the benefits were obvious: longer range and far superior accuracy. Against the sub-50-meter effective range of smoothbore flintlocks, muzzle-loading rifles served as the sniper rifles of their age.

Why, then, hadn't they become widespread? Two reasons dominated. First, manufacturing was complex and expensive. Second, loading proved agonizingly difficult. Rifling's accuracy came from bullets spinning along the grooves, which required the projectile to engage firmly with the barrel. Without Minié balls, this meant using bullets slightly larger than bore diameter, forcing them to deform into the rifling. To put it crudely: they had to be hammered in. Though rarely quite that extreme, loading remained far slower than with smoothbores. Some nations equipped their elite infantry with rifles, but widespread adoption never materialized.

The Minié ball changed everything. These conical projectiles were slightly smaller than bore diameter, sliding down the barrel with ease. The base featured a conical cavity fitted with a wooden plug. When the weapon fired, expanding gas drove the plug into the cavity, flaring the bullet's base outward to grip the rifling and seal the bore. The projectile emerged spinning true. Minié balls solved both the muzzle-loader's loading difficulty and the smoothbore's crippling accuracy problems—elevating rifles above cannons as the battlefield's decisive weapons.

Trigger pull—BANG—the recoil jolted through Wang Luobin's shoulder with painful force. Faint smoke curled from the muzzle and dissipated into the air. A hundred meters distant beneath the fortress wall, Jiang Ye sprinted from his shelter, checked the target, pasted white paper over the fresh hole, and shouted into a bamboo-tube telephone.

Wang Luobin removed his right earplug and pressed his ear to his own bamboo tube. "Nine ring—seven o'clock deviation."

He waved acknowledgment. Excellent result. First shot very near the bullseye—this rifle would calibrate within two hours. Taking a small file, he shaved a thin layer from the brass sight's left side, then loosened the barrel clamp, loaded powder and ball, and carefully re-aimed at the 100-meter half-body target. After 100-meter calibration came different-height targets simulating 200, 300, and 400 meters. Beyond that range, a soldier trusted his luck.

This particular rifle took only forty minutes to calibrate—exceptional accuracy. A perfect masterpiece. He estimated it could drop individual cavalry at 300 meters. Finally, a branding iron marked his initials on the stock's upper rear edge, with "J+" below to indicate sniper grade. After all, standard Minié rifles only required 60% hits on targets twenty feet wide and eight feet tall at 400 yards.

Wang Luobin glanced at the board where four zheng characters had been scratched in charcoal and heavily added a stroke to the fourth. Nearby, Zhan Wuya's group finished their fourth rifle as well. Today's quota of fifty rifles seemed well within reach—likely to be exceeded.

Their three thousand steel tubes and components would yield three thousand rifles, plus roughly a thousand spare parts. Two weeks ago, however, the Industrial Department had decided to cut twenty tubes into approximately two-inch sections for Derringer pistol production. Losing twenty rifles was a small price to pay for short-barreled weapons that would equip the Navy, Intelligence, and other departments needing compact self-defense sidearms. There was no intention of issuing GLOCKs to natives.

Though rifles assembled quickly—eighty-odd daily—without rigorous calibration, rifles given to rookies who had barely fired live rounds weren't much better than flintlock poles. Externally formidable, internally fragile—that described the transmigrators' current predicament perfectly.

Only after producing six hundred rifles did the Industrial Group reduce the daily quota slightly, carving out time for precision calibration and selecting accuracy-grade rifles. Percussion caps were carefully stockpiled for actual combat, which related directly to the General Staff's operational doctrine.

Given that future enemies would come in enormous numbers—whether Ming forces or pirates—engagements of a thousand or more were routine expectations. The transmigrators' operations had expanded beyond what a turtle defense could sustain; defending everywhere meant weakness everywhere. Military doctrine dictated striking outward: deploying infiltration forces on the perimeter for cold shooting, mining, and harassing enemy movements and logistics. Such tactics demanded precision rifles for frontline units. Longer-range shooting improved infiltration teams' survival odds considerably. A single shot dropping cavalry or officers clearly reduced the pressure on frontal engagements.

Days ago, the summary meeting's Intelligence Department had delivered sobering news: a major battle loomed within one month. Whether pirates or Ming forces, the transmigrators faced two to three thousand attackers. If Ming troops came, the mainland might continuously reinforce them. Without inflicting a decisive defeat or annihilating portions of the enemy force, a siege could grind on for one to two months.

The Industrial Department's burden increased dramatically overnight. Beyond fifty daily rifles, they needed to stockpile combat ammunition. The Metallurgy Department smelted steel while simultaneously mass-refining copper and lead. Casting molds churned out Minié balls and round iron shot: over three thousand Minié balls and 250 round shot daily. With stockpiled ammunition, a several-day battle at thirty to forty rounds daily per rifle was manageable.

On the artillery side, the Foundry had delivered nine 8-pounder smoothbores. With familiar processes, casting smoothbores had become routine. Rear-loading cannons initially proved troublesome—machining breech blocks to specification took three days per qualified block, yielding only two cannons in the first week. But after collective analysis, the Mechanical Group refined their processes: cut steel plates without rushing to weld, first grinding end faces and weld steps on foot-pedal grinders, then using local granite slabs as jig frames for welding. Now six 70mm Armstrong guns stood completed. The 12-pounder mountain howitzers were simpler still—with sufficient pig iron, they could produce one daily. Fourteen 12-pounder mountain howitzers had already been delivered.

As cannon production increased, the Mechanical Group mastered the manufacturing processes, work hours, and component dimensions for each type. They designed and manufactured specialized dies and tooling, and using imported measurement instruments, they quickly minimized tolerances. Manufacturing standards emerged for each cannon type, enabling true standardized production. Every cannon's parameters matched identically to others of the same class.

Standardization brought consistent performance. The Artillery Group test-fired every cannon batch, meticulously measuring firing parameters. Based on shell type and target distance, they determined proper charge amounts and barrel elevations. When necessary, the Artillery Group conducted dangerous experiments—maximum safe rate, barrel life, and maximum charge tests—pushing each cannon to reveal its full potential.

Test and calculation results became firing tables. The tables required only four parameters and came in book format for quick reference by gunners. They could even skip the text entirely—just graphics showing shell types and corresponding numbers.

If gunners had to determine all this themselves, they would need mastery of mathematics, geometry, and even algebra. Hence early-era gunners were half foundryman, half mathematician—the origin of the saying that artillery required high-tech personnel. But this wasn't inevitable, merely conceptual backwardness. With standardized guns and proper tables, gunners needed no sophistication whatsoever. Recognizing numbers and graphics, knowing a few hundred characters—that sufficed. Training difficulty dropped precipitously. Theoretically, even illiterates could serve effectively. This approach suited the transmigrators' societal environment perfectly.

As transmigrators, they possessed not just modern technology but centuries of accumulated conceptual advances. Sometimes those concepts exceeded raw technology in their effectiveness.

(End of Chapter)