Chapter 113: Guns and Cannons

In the end, 1 kilogram of mercury produced about 1.2 kilograms of fulminate of mercury. The chemical group was very satisfied with this result; after all, the amount of fulminate of mercury used in each percussion cap was very small.

The percussion caps used on the Minie rifles were best made of copper. The transmigrators had not brought any copper, so the Guangzhou advance station purchased a large quantity of Japanese red copper bars. This copper was very popular on the market because it contained a considerable amount of silver. Extracting the silver could offset the cost of buying the copper.

The metallurgy group re-refined the copper bars, obtaining high-purity copper ingots and a small amount of silver. With the raw materials sorted out, the mechanical group designed and built a machine specifically for stamping percussion caps. They made the molds and, powered by electricity, could press 10 percussion caps at a time.

After confirming that there were no problems with the mass production of percussion caps, the assembly of the firearms began. These muzzle-loading rifled guns, which used Minie ammunition, were assembled from 14mm alloy steel seamless tubes for high-pressure boilers, purchased before their departure. After the steel tubes were bought, they were secretly rifled with 5 “internal threads” with a 48 cm twist at the machine shop opened by Zhan Wuya. Other parts like the hammer, trigger, and springs were also stamped from 4-5mm thick alloy steel plates in his factory. If they hadn’t done this back then, and had to process the rifling themselves, they probably wouldn’t have many rifled guns even now. The New Army would likely have to use Brown Bess muskets—a type of smoothbore gun that also had a cult following among the “line-infantry-tactic” enthusiasts. Although Wang Luobin was also a line-infantry-tactic enthusiast, he wasn’t fundamentalist enough. True line-infantry-tactic purists would absolutely refuse rifled muskets.

Rifled guns were not a very new weapon. In the era of flintlock smoothbore guns, there were also flintlock rifled guns. Compared to smoothbore guns, the advantages of rifled guns were obvious: greater range and higher accuracy. Compared to flintlock smoothbore guns with an effective range of less than 50 meters, muzzle-loading rifled guns could be used as sniper rifles in terms of accuracy and range at that time.

The biggest problems that prevented its widespread adoption were, first, the complex manufacturing process and high cost, and second, the difficulty of loading. The reason rifled guns could shoot farther and more accurately was that the bullet had to rotate along the rifling before leaving the barrel. This required the bullet to be embedded in the rifling. Before the Minie ball, the bullet had to be slightly larger than the diameter of the rifling, and brute force was used to deform the bullet and force it into the rifling. It’s an exaggeration to say it had to be hammered in, but it was a fact that it was slower to load than a smoothbore gun. Therefore, although it was equipped on a small scale by many countries for elite infantry, it was not widely used.

The advent of the Minie ball changed the fate of the muzzle-loading rifled gun. The diameter of the conical Minie ball was slightly smaller than the bore of the gun, making loading very convenient. The base of the bullet had a conical cavity, plugged by a wooden plug. When fired, the gas pressure forced the wooden plug into the cavity, causing the base of the bullet to expand and press tightly against the rifling, sealing the gap between the bullet and the gun bore. This prevented gas from escaping and also caused the bullet to rotate at high speed under the pressure of the rifling. The Minie ball solved the problem of difficult loading for muzzle-loading rifled guns and the low accuracy and range of smoothbore guns, making the rifle surpass the cannon as the decisive weapon on the battlefield at the time.

Pulling the trigger, with a loud “bang,” the gun body slammed backward, and Wang Luobin’s shoulder ached from the impact. A faint wisp of gunpowder smoke slowly drifted from the muzzle. Below the city wall 100 meters away, Jiang Ye ran out from the shelter, looked at the target, patched the new hole with white paper, and then shouted into a makeshift telephone made of a bamboo tube. Wang Luobin took off the earplug from his right ear, brought his ear close to the bamboo tube on his end, and heard him say, “9 ring, 7 o’clock direction.” He raised his hand to signal that he had heard.

This result was quite good! The first shot was very close to the bullseye. It seemed this gun could be calibrated in less than two hours. He picked up a small file and filed off a thin layer from the left side of the brass notch sight. Then he loosened the vise holding the gun body and loaded the powder and bullet. He slowly aimed again at the center of the half-body target 100 meters away for another 100-meter calibration. His luck was really good; everything was as normal as could be. After the 100-meter calibration was done, he still needed to use several targets at different heights to simulate and test for long distances of 200, 300, and 400 meters. For longer distances, it would depend on the soldier’s luck.

This gun was finished in only 40 minutes, and its accuracy was quite high, a truly perfect masterpiece. It was estimated that it could take down a single cavalryman from 300 meters with one shot. Finally, Wang Luobin used a soldering iron to brand his initials on the top of the rear of the stock, adding a “J+” below it to indicate that it was a good gun that could be used as a sniper rifle. That completed the job. After all, even for a Minie-type rifled musket, the requirement was only a 60% hit rate on a 20-foot wide, 8-foot high target at 400 yards.

Looking at the four tally marks written with a charcoal stick on the wooden board, Wang Luobin heavily added a fifth stroke next to the fourth tally. Beside him, Zhan Wuya’s team had also finished their fourth tally. It seemed there would be no problem with today’s production plan of 50 guns for this shift; they might even exceed the quota by a few.

3,000 steel tubes and parts could make 3,000 rifles. There were also about 1,000 sets of spare parts. However, two weeks ago, the Industrial Department decided to cut 20 gun barrels into short tubes of about 2 inches to make Derringer pistols. Although this meant 20 fewer rifles, it would provide self-defense firearms for departments like the Navy and the Intelligence Bureau, which needed short weapons. They had no intention of issuing Glocks to the natives.

Although the guns were assembled quickly, with more than 80 completed each day, a rifle that had not been strictly calibrated, when handed to a rookie infantryman who had not fired two live rounds, was not much better than a smoothbore fire stick. Strong on the outside but weak on the inside—this probably described the current predicament of the transmigrators.

It wasn’t until they had more than 600 guns that the Industrial Group reduced the daily gun assembly quota a little and spent time carefully calibrating and selecting precision guns. The percussion caps were carefully stored, ready for war. This was related to the General Staff’s operational policy. Given that the enemy, once they arrived, would be very numerous—whether Ming troops or pirates, it was no problem for them to dispatch thousands of men—the transmigrators were in a different situation than before. Their enterprise had spread out, and adopting a turtle strategy of fortified camps would lead to a dilemma of being passive everywhere. The military’s policy was to fight outwards, sending out infiltration units on the periphery to snipe, lay mines, and harass the enemy’s main force and logistics. Such tactics required equipping the front-line troops with enough precision guns. After all, being able to shoot from a greater distance was very beneficial for the survival of the infiltration units. Being able to take down a cavalryman or an officer with one shot was obviously also very useful for reducing the pressure in a frontal engagement.

A few days ago, at a summary meeting, the Intelligence Department pointed out that there would be a major battle within a month. Regardless of whether the invaders were pirates or Ming troops, the transmigrators would face an enemy force of two to three thousand men coming to besiege them. If it was the Ming army, they might even continue to send reinforcements from the mainland. It was estimated that if they could not inflict a major blow on the Ming army in one battle and annihilate a part of it, the siege would last for one or two months. Thus, the burden on the Industrial Department suddenly increased. Not only did they have to assemble 50 guns a day, but they also needed to stockpile ammunition for the upcoming fierce battle. The metallurgy department not only had to smelt steel but also had to refine copper and lead on a large scale. They had already started mass-producing Minie balls and round iron cannonballs using molds. They could produce more than 3,000 Minie balls and 250 round balls per day. Coupled with the already stockpiled ammunition, it would be no problem to cope with a fierce battle lasting several days with 30-40 rounds fired per day.

In terms of artillery, the foundry had already delivered 9 8-pounder smoothbore cannons. After familiarizing themselves with the process, casting such smoothbore cannons was no longer a big deal. For breech-loading cannons, they were not very skilled at processing the breechblock at the beginning. A qualified breechblock took 3 days to make, and in the last week, only 2 cannons were completed. However, after collective analysis and research, the mechanical group improved the process. After the steel plates were cut, they were not immediately welded. They were first polished on a foot-pedal grinder on the end faces and the welding bevels, and then welded using a jig made of local granite slabs. They had now completed 6 70mm Armstrong guns. The 12-pounder mountain howitzer was much simpler. As long as there was enough pig iron, it could be delivered from the factory at a rate of one per day. They had already delivered 14 12-pounder mountain howitzers.

As the number of cannons manufactured increased, the mechanical group had basically mastered the manufacturing process, required man-hours, and dimensions of various parts for each type of artillery. They designed and manufactured various special molds and tooling for artillery production. With the help of the large number of measuring tools they brought, the mechanical department quickly reduced the tolerances to a minimum, established manufacturing standards for various types of artillery, and began standardized manufacturing. This would make the parameters and structure of each cannon of the same type completely identical.

With standardized manufacturing, it meant that the performance of every cannon of the same type was similar. Each batch of artillery manufactured by the transmigrators was specially test-fired by the artillery group to obtain its firing parameters—determining the propellant charge and muzzle elevation based on the type of ammunition used and the target distance. When necessary, the artillery group would also attempt dangerous tests of maximum safe firing rate, barrel life, and maximum charge to determine the potential capabilities of the artillery.

The results obtained from the artillery tests and calculations were then made into firing tables. The firing tables, containing those four parameters, were made into books so that the artillerymen could quickly look them up. They could even be made without text, using only graphics (for ammunition type) and numbers.

If all this was done by the gunners, then the gunners would not only need to be familiar with the cannon itself but also with mathematics, geometry, and even algebra. Therefore, early gunners were not only gunsmiths but also half-mathematicians, which is where the saying “artillery needs high-tech talent” comes from. But this was not inevitable; it was just the result of an outdated concept. With such standardized cannons and firing tables, the artillerymen did not need to be highly skilled at all. As long as they could recognize numbers and graphics, and at most a few hundred characters, the training difficulty for artillerymen was greatly reduced. In theory, even illiterates could do it—which was very suitable for the social environment the transmigrators faced.

As transmigrators, they not only possessed the modern technology of later generations but also the advanced concepts accumulated by human society over hundreds of years. Sometimes, such concepts could be more effective than technology itself.