When the train arrived in New York, a group of military chiefs of the Matsue Regiment and Sandos of Citigroup's U.S. Division were already waiting on the platform.

As soon as Guan Zhuofan got off the train, Wall strode forward and held his hand tightly, the excited and fanatical light in his blue eyes startled Guan Zhuofan: "Yixuan, congratulations on winning the Congressional Medal of Honor!" ”

Looks like the news is spreading pretty quickly. Guan Zhuofan looked at the radiant Wall on his face, and muttered in his heart, don't learn from that Custer, you can fight if you can't get it.

This little metal object really has such a high place in the minds of American devils.

He wasn't too excited to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor -- he certainly understood that this was Lincoln's point. But in front of the Americans, it was difficult to express a little contempt, so I really said a few words of encouragement.

There were also several foreigners in the welcoming crowd, one of whom was the mayor of New York. When Xuan Jun arrived in New York, the welcome ceremony was presided over by the federal government, and it was not his turn to be in the limelight, this time Marquis Guan returned from the capital, and he originally planned to hold a grand welcome ceremony in the name of New York City, and then confer on Marquis Guan the "Honorary Citizen of New York" or something. Wall waited to persuade him alive and dead, saying that the military situation was urgent, and there was no time for such red tape, and there would be a chance to bother him in the future. Mr. Mayor had no choice but to give up.

Another person was slightly out of the accident of Guan Zhuofan, the new secretary of ordnance of the US federal government, George . Ramsay. It was probably because of the new official taking office, full of spring breeze, and he admired Guan Zhuofan very much.

This pattern is a little bigger.

There was also a young man, dressed modestly, and Wall gave him a slight hand. said to Guan Zhuofan: "Yixuan." Let me introduce you to you. This is Christopher. Mr. Spencer ......"

Guan Zhuofan's eyes lit up, he took a step forward, and stretched out his hand to the young man: "Mr. Spencer, I have admired you for a long time, and I am very happy to see such a great inventor as you." ”

Christopher. Spencer, the inventor of the famous Spencer repeater gun, this gun is the most important weapon provided by the U.S. government this time.

Spencer looked excited. He bowed deeply before holding Guan Zhuofan's hand: "Your Excellency Marquis, it is my greatest honor to serve you. ”

Guan Zhuofan felt slightly strange, but he didn't care.

As the group walked, Wall said to Guan Zhuofan: "The weapons and equipment provided by the federal government have arrived at the station, and we have counted the number. ”

Guan Zhuofan nodded, and Daniel Zhang whispered excitedly on the side: "Sir, this silk pat or something." That's a good thing! Take it, and you can hit seven at a time! ”

Guan Zhuofan smiled. One hits seven, which should mean that the Spencer repeater can be loaded with seven rounds at a time. But one hit seven, but it's not so exaggerated. But there is no doubt that this gun is an epoch-making revolutionary weapon.

When he arrived at the yard, he took out a wooden box from the warehouse, pried it open, and there were fifteen brand-new rifles neatly stacked, the oil had not been wiped clean, and the barrel was short, Wall said, this was a carbine model of the Spencer rifle, intended for cavalry.

Since Spencer was here, it was naturally up to him to demonstrate the gun himself.

Guan Zhuofan thought to himself, this is the most powerful rifle on the planet at present.

Let's start with bullets. The Spencer Repeater uses a real metal load, but it is a rim fire (the primer is at the bottom edge of the bullet) instead of the later mainstream centerfire (the primer is at the center of the bottom of the bullet). This is one of the earliest metal fixed ammunition on the shijie, you know, the breech rifle that Xuan Jun was equipped with before was already the most advanced rifle on the shijie at that time, and the cartridge case of the bullet was still made of paper.

Let's talk about the most important thing, "Lianzhu".

The Spencer is fed in an interesting way, with a magazine hidden in the butt, which opens at the bottom of the stock. Spencer used a cartridge called Klebsley, which could hold seven rounds and inserted the magazine through the opening at the bottom of the stock, so that the shooter could not scramble to reload the cartridge after firing the bullets in the cartridge, but simply pull out the empty cartridge and stuff it into a new one.

Guan Zhuofan thought to himself, this is completely the ancestor of the magazines of automatic guns in later generations, as long as a soldier carries a dozen cartridges, at this point in time in the middle of the nineteenth century, it is a mobile "arsenal".

The repeating mechanism of the Spencer rifle is to use a lever to drive the bolt lock, and the spring in the magazine to drive the bullet. The actual operation is also very simple.

First of all, Xiangxia pulls the lever - that is, the trigger retainer, the bullet extractor takes a bullet from the magazine, closes the trigger retain, and the bullet is sent into the chamber, and then pulls the hammer to make it in the firing state, and then, pull the trigger, bang!

Watching Spencer skillfully feed, lock, fire, and then unlock and throw the shell, and then feed and lock, he ran out of a cartridge in a moment, neatly pulled out the empty cartridge, loaded it with a new cartridge, and shot it again, and the end was as dense as beads!

The people around him were all enthusiastic and colorful.

Looking at the target paper again, only one shot missed the target. The accuracy seems to be slightly inferior to that of a single-shot rifle, but considering that the test gun was a carbine model with a shorter barrel, which would have affected a little range and accuracy, it was completely acceptable.

Wall reported that, in addition to the 8,500 breech-loading rifles brought by the Xuan army from China, the United States received 18,000 Deselay screeching rifles and 7,500 Spencer rifles produced in Prussia, of which 4,600 were rifles and 2,900 were Carbines.

The Spencer rifle has just been put into production, and the production capacity is limited, which was expected by Guan Zhuofan, but the single-shot rifle is all Prussian goods, which is quite surprising to him, how can it all be taken from abroad? Doesn't the U.S. government support domestic products?

In addition, 135 artillery pieces of various kinds were allocated to the Songjiang Corps, Wall said, and in addition, the War Department also sent an artillery training team to join the Songjiang Corps sequence, and explained that after the war, people returned to the original structure, but the artillery Songjiang Corps could be left behind.

Guan Zhuofan is very happy: This is good, this is good. We are already short of artillery talents, so we should take this opportunity to learn from him.

After this reception process, the Minister of Ordnance and Spencer took their leave, and the Marquis Guan and his party got into the carriage, and the destination was a boarding school, where the Songjiang Corps had disembarked and was changing clothes.

Sandos found an excuse, got into Guan Zhuofan's carriage, and in the car, he told Guan Zhuofan in detail the ins and outs of receiving this batch of ordnance. I didn't have time to say these words when I was on the ship before.

It turns out that there are many twists and turns behind it.

Let's start with single-shot rifles. After Sandos started this matter, he realized that the United States could not find many rifles that met Guan Zhuofan's requirements.

At the beginning of the American Civil War, the main armament of both sides was front-loading rifled guns, better in the north, and a variety of weapons in the south, as well as many smoothbore guns and even flintlock pistols. Even today, a front-loading rifled gun called the Springfield is still the staple rifle of the North and South armies.

At this time, breech guns were also available, but most of them were collected from Europe, local goods, and the only decent point was a single-shot breech-loading rifle called "Sharps". However, Sandoz found that the gun used a ramming fire cap type bullet, that is, the fire cap and bullet were separated. Sandos thought, although the British rifle that Guan Daren made in China used paper shells, after all, it was already a fixed ammunition, and instead of going abroad, it fell back? This kind of gun must not be able to enter the eyes of Lord Guan and cannot be used.

Unexpectedly, although the United States came out with a repeating rifle like Spencer, the single-shot one did not follow.

After thinking about it, I still have to use foreign goods.

At that time, Prussia, France, and England all developed their own rear-loading single-shot rifles, each with its own merits, and it is difficult to say who must have overwhelmed whom, but at such a time, the US government bought guns from Britain and France, and the number was still so large, nine times out of ten. Since foreign goods have been chosen, it is better to use all Prussian ones, so that the types of weapons of the troops are relatively unified, and it is easier to do logistics replenishment of ammunition and so on.

What I didn't expect was that the Prussian side was not yin or yang, and hesitated.

*(To be continued......)