Napoleon said that artillery is the god of the battlefield, and the invincibility of the French army starts from artillery, in fact, if you look at the basic structure, artillery and muskets are very similar, both are gunpowder to push projectile attacks, the difference is that muskets are small, and artillery is large.

If it is said that the method of making a gun with iron is not suitable for ordinary smoothbore guns, it is too thick, the efficiency is not high, the performance is not particularly stable, it is too thin, it is not good, and it is easy to explode, but this is not a problem when it is placed on the artillery.

Before the First World War, artillery was basically not used intensively, and it was all follower infantry, responsible for attacking fortifications or supporting firepower.

The first and second Opium Wars, and even the invasion of the Eight-Nation Alliance, do you say that the Qing army really has no weapons with a range above the musket, there must be, but the artillery is not good, so these will often be cleaned up in a short period of time.

If in the era of having a longbow, the musket represents the future, then the artillery represents the present, there is no contradiction between the longbow and the artillery, and with the artillery longbow team, it is truly invincible.

The longbow is perfectly combined with the range of artillery, and the longbow is a perfect combination for unarmored and lightly armored targets, and artillery, which is for heavy armor and armored targets.

In fact, after the completion of the manufacture of the smoothbore gun, the manufacture of the artillery, there is no problem, it is the same concept, the difference between the artillery is that there is no way to make a firing like a musket, it is similar to the arquebus, there is a fuse on it, by ignition, and then fired, it is easier, after the arquebus studied before is enlarged, it is the artillery.

Similarly, at the beginning, the artillery must be of good quality, and Zhao Xin chose to use the master's method to process the barrel.

Because the caliber of the artillery is the largest, at the beginning, the caliber prepared by Zhao Xin was about 3 inches, and the processing of steel of this caliber does not have to be just those masters, the initial processing work is a hard work, which can be handed over to ordinary workers for rough processing, and then to the back, the work of smooth cannon holes will be handed over to the master.

However, processing steel is always so complicated, even if it is the cooperation of 3 masters and more than 20 laborers, it takes 5 days to process the barrel.

The first cannon, just like that, was processed successfully in a purely manual way, as for gunpowder and shells, Zhao Xin still chose iron bullets, lead bullets are not suitable here, the cost is higher, and it is easy to separate, iron bullets are just right, iron is harder than lead. Iron is softer than steel, and it is more powerful, and as for gunpowder, of course, nitrocellulose is chosen.

After experiments with muskets, nitrocellulose has been proven to be much higher than the black powder used before, especially in muskets, which need to be reused, with lower residues and black smoke, which can increase the combat effectiveness of muskets.

A simple, can only be called a small cannon, just like that, the caliber is about the thickness of a small teacup, the thickness is about two centimeters, the length is not short, about 2 meters long barrel, it looks strange, some like some thin steel pipes in later generations.

In the performance of Dinghai steel, this gun does not look clumsy, but quite agile, and the overall weight is not very heavy, plus the gun carriage and the like, it is only about 5 stones, and even to some extent, it is lighter than a large bed crossbow.

The navy is relatively mature in terms of steel and gunpowder, and artillery is a larger firearm at best, and as long as the chamber can withstand the impact of gunpowder, there is no problem.

At the beginning, I didn't dare to get more gunpowder, the first shot was successful, the range was only 60 meters, but the sound was very loud, which made everyone startled, and many people did not think so about this project, but then, with the gradual loading of gunpowder, especially with reference to the proportion of ordinary arquebuses for loading.

The barrel brings the accumulation of kinetic energy, which is also the fundamental reason why Zhao Xin chose a barrel of more than 2 meters, the explosive power of nitrocellulose is much greater than that of black powder, but this artillery is still not in the best state, under the premise of enough gunpowder, the maximum range is only 500 meters.

As a prototype artillery, the range of one mile, this is acceptable, this range has exceeded the range of the longbow, but this is the best thing in the current Dinghai Navy, or it is produced by pure manual methods, which cannot satisfy Zhao Xin.

You can't eat a fat man in one bite, the research on artillery must be carried out slowly, and gradually understand some characteristics of artillery, artillery looks similar to a musket, but it is a completely different thing from a musket.

Zhao Xin divided the research of artillery, studying how to make the artillery go farther, how to load more gunpowder, which is to improve the basic performance of the artillery, on the other hand, he also chose to manufacture artillery.

Similar manual methods, definitely not the best choice, Zhao Xin gave a lot of methods, rolling iron method, clay method, iron method, in short, have not heard of, will take out, let them try, which one is easy to use.

In terms of the power of artillery, it has increased very quickly, and the power of artillery, the most important thing, comes from the filling of gunpowder, perhaps 1 catty and 2 catties of gunpowder filling, because of the improvement of some systems, the final result is almost the same, but between 1 catty and 10 catties, it must be 10 catties is a little more powerful.

As long as the steel can withstand the impact of gunpowder and can be fired for a long time, more gunpowder is the best embodiment of the improvement of artillery performance.

After the bore was treated to be smoother, after being improved, the iron was replaced with lead to increase the airtightness.

This point is the mistake of Zhao Xin's memory, lead is not that it cannot be used as artillery shells, as long as it is slightly treated, the softer lead, when fired by gunpowder, can be attached to the gun chamber to advance, increase air tightness, and better use the impact of gunpowder.

It's just that after boring, because of the extrusion relationship, it is mostly some irregular shapes, and the flight posture in the air is not good, but the improvement of simple air tightness has made the cannonballs of the same weight fly farther.

When these reports arrived at Zhao Xin, Zhao Xin couldn't laugh or cry, sure enough, this was another mistake in memory, in his impression, it seems that ancient China was all iron bullets, who knows, there are also lead bullets, and the elastic performance of lead is still so strong.

As for the problem of flight, there is no way to do this, the resistance of irregular bullets is quite large, and the circular bullets are not much better, and the streamlined type that really reduces air resistance is conical, which is later, after the overall metal bomb is installed, and now, the distance is still very far away.

However, after a series of improvements, for example, the barrel was thickened, the barrel was doubled, the charge reached 4 times the original, the lead bullet increased the air tightness, and the power was increased, and finally several methods were combined, so that the range of the gun reached 1300 meters.

This is no longer the range that ordinary bows and arrows can reach, in battle, it is very representative, the maximum range of the longbow is 400, and the short bow is even closer.

1300 meters is equivalent to 2.6 miles, for a fast horse galloping horse, it takes at least 100 breaths, or even longer, to be able to cross this process, if there is an artillery attack, disrupting their camp, plus the consumption of the longbow, can really cross this area, attack the defense force is very small.

The longbow of the forbidden army is not a separate unit, but a small number of heavy infantry and heavy cavalry, and the team composed of these heavy armored troops will have a huge protective effect, which forms a more perfect camp.

In the past, if the cavalry wanted to run, after paying a certain price, they could still run away, and if they had artillery, the loss would definitely increase a lot under the range of 2.6 miles.

This is not Zhao Xin's magic, in fact, on the artillery, Zhao Xin really doesn't know much, in later generations of China, even guns are banned, ordinary police are not allowed to bring guns, let alone ordinary people, artillery, it is impossible to see.

The reason why there is such a big progress, comes from the materials of the Dinghai Navy, and other attempts to develop artillery is that the Dinghai Navy, in terms of materials, has gone to the front, not to mention the hardness of the highest end of 6.9 or more, and now the artillery is used, which is about 6.4 hardness, and a kind of steel with better flexibility, which can not only resist the impact of gunpowder, but also can be used for a long time.

This kind of material is only one of the many excellent materials in the Dinghai Navy, and this kind of material, even if it was placed at the beginning of the 20th century, or even during the First World War, there is no problem as artillery steel, let alone this embryonic state.

The firing range has increased, and it is farther, it is not impossible, but the increase of the 3-inch caliber has reached the limit, and it makes no sense to continue to thicken, the power is not large, and it is futile to increase it again.

However, as long as the caliber is raised, it is natural to be suitable for larger caliber artillery under the condition that the material is higher than the technology.

Soon, the researchers enlarged the 3-inch gun and increased it to 9 inches, this caliber is already quite terrifying, almost about a foot in the Song Dynasty, the thickness is proportional, and the length of the barrel is further increased, which constitutes a terrible weapon that is at least 10 times heavier than the 3-inch gun, a real attack artillery.

In the end, the maximum power, the firing range can reach 7 miles, the weight of the shell can reach 30 catties, the power is huge, even the reinforced concrete fortifications, can be shot down, destroy most of the half, the previously indestructible fortress, in front of such artillery, is not too strong.

Everyone was taken aback by the power of the artillery, 7 miles, before the telescope was discovered, this was almost outside the visual limit, a little bit of bad day, this is not very clear, but now, it can be attacked by artillery, 30 pounds of shells, one cannon down, it is really a piece, dozens of sheep are densely placed, under this attack, it is almost impossible to survive.

Only then did they realize that the terrible artillery that Zhao Xin said, one artillery could do things that hundreds, or even thousands of archers, could not do, and 7 miles, even the fastest horse, would take more than 500 breaths.

The rate of fire of the artillery is not fast, but 500 breaths, it can fire at least 3 shots, even if it is one gun, it will cost a huge price, let alone more guns.

Zhao Xinzai knew that the artillery research team turned its energy to the giant artillery, and he couldn't laugh or cry, but thinking about it, he solved the most important material problem of artillery in Dinghai, and also knew some characteristics of artillery, between cannons and small artillery, there was no obvious boundary, and he didn't focus on artillery.

However, what they did not take into account was that the problem of artillery, 9 inches, this caliber is not ordinarily large, which almost reached 228 caliber artillery, which was almost the largest in the army following artillery fire during World War I, and the general army's artillery only stopped at 210 mm, not because it did not have the ability to make more, but because, for the marching conditions of the army at that time, 210 mm was large enough.

Even now, Dingjun only made a single barrel at most, but the weight of the barrel is as high as 15 tons, no way, Dingjun has no accumulation on the artillery, he just according to Zhao Xin, if the strength is not enough, use thickness to solve it.

The steel used in the entire artillery is about 2 cubic meters of steel, plus some auxiliary settings, but it is not more than 15 tons.

The weight of 15 tons is not a small weight for later generations, in this era, it was almost the weight of operation, this artillery was transported from the place of construction, to the test site, ships were used, and a large number of cranes were used, almost an hour at a speed of 50 meters, and it took several days to complete the journey of 3 miles.

Under the premise that the Dinghai Navy has built a large number of roads and a large amount of equipment, it is so slow, for the land of the Northern Song Dynasty, such artillery cannot be moved at all.

Even, Zhao Xin thought about getting this thing on the ship, but the wooden-themed warship could not withstand the recoil of such an artillery launch, and if he was not careful, the ship itself would rot into a big hole.

Zhao Xin's main purpose in developing artillery is to prepare to get it on the ship, who knows, but it is such a result, he can't laugh or cry, only order, continue to research, lightweight, reduce weight, strive to install the gun on the ship, and modify the gun position on the ship, so that it can withstand the impact of this artillery.

In terms of firing range and artillery caliber, there have been huge results, but on the other hand, the popularization of artillery manufacturing, using various methods to increase the speed of artillery production, but fell into a bottleneck, Zhao Xin went to pay attention to it, but found that it was similar to before, there was not much progress, the production of the entire experimental artillery, basically, or pure handwork, which made Zhao Xin greatly incomprehensible, not all the elements were said, and the solution was proposed, was not implemented?