After taking the whole island of Qiongzhou, the military industrial base "Iron House" was officially moved to Qiongzhou Mansion.

At this time, the artillery could not be produced due to the exhaustion of steel plates. In addition, at full capacity, the production capacity of iron house guns has increased significantly. Soon, after the total production of 515 breech guns, including long and short shotguns and pistols, and nearly 300 spare barrels of various types, the stock of seamless steel tubes was also depleted.

Since then, the main production of the iron house has been concentrated on flintlock pistols. At this time, the Dragon Sparrow Army also expanded sharply with the momentum of a great victory, the demand for flintlock pistols was increasing, and the proportion of musketeers in the Dragon Sparrow Army was also getting heavier and heavier, and there was a great transition from semi-hot weapons and semi-cold weapons to all-firearms.

However, no matter how much Ren Suifa pistols were produced, for the Dragon Bird Army, the real elite that could never be replicated and surpassed was only an army composed of two modern weapons fully equipped with breech guns - the Wugong Team and the Yanling Team.

The Yanling team still had only more than 50 people, but the martial arts team had expanded to more than 300 people, of which 200 were shotgunners.

The shotgun is the strongest killer weapon of Zhao Hunt's infantry (although the artillery is stronger, but unfortunately the number is too small), on the battlefield, two hundred shotgunmen lined up, gathering fire and bombardment, can instantly defeat a team of 10,000 people. Unfortunately, the shotgun has an Achilles' heel and the fire output is too close. As a result, the shotgunmen had to endure the enemy's arrows before they could crush them.

Zhao Lie's attempt to make the shotgunmen wear heavy armor for defense, but it had a certain effect in the drill. But no matter how strong the heavy armor is, the eyes must be exposed, and there are still certain gaps in the joints of the joints, and it is still difficult to escape the fate of being shot in the eye and limb injuries against the elite Mongolian quivers or the sharpshooters in the Han army and the newly annexed army. And once you are blind or injured in a limb, let alone shoot, it is difficult to even get loaded.

The shield defense is slightly better than wearing heavy armor, but it is still suppressed, and the range is too close, which is always the shortcoming of the shotgun. In the past, Zhao Hunt used a method of warfare with musketeers and pistols to cooperate with shotgunmen, muskets and far, pistols fast, plus the power of shotguns, forming a perfect complement. However, with the refinement of the martial arts team, it is not a matter of mixing and matching the musket, a breech weapon that is slow and extremely difficult to see, into modern weapons, and it is better to have a breech weapon instead.

Zhao Lie's ordnance base is restricted by materials, and it is no longer possible to produce new weapons, but if you change your thinking, weapons cannot be developed, so can you make a fuss about bullets?

When the battle of Limu Mountain ended, Zhao Lie, who participated in and commanded the whole battle, repeatedly deduced the battle with the generals after the war, and suddenly thought of a new idea - the conventional bullet of the shotgun is of course a shotgun, but the shotgun is not the only bullet of the shotgun!

The shotgun is a smoothbore gun, in addition to firing a rainstorm pear-like shotgun, it can also fire bullets - one-headed bullets!

In a hidden valley thirty miles outside the city of Qiongzhou is the test range of the "Iron House", the military industrial base of the Xing Dynasty. For each batch of guns produced, a test team composed of craftsmen and gunners conducts test firing to ensure that the performance of each produced gun is up to standard. Every gun in the hands of the Dragonbird Musketeers, whether it is a breech or a breech, must be qualified.

Today, the gunners who came to the test were different from the past, they came from the two most elite armies of the Great Song Dynasty - the martial arts team and the Yanling team.

Yang Zheng, Ding Xiaoyi, Ding Xiaoyi, Ouyang Luoyan, and the four of them respectively represented the team for test firing.

They all hold a double-barreled shotgun in their hands, the style is basically similar to the previous one, and only when you look closely, you can notice that there are subtle differences in the muzzle part. In the past, shotguns were a straight tube, but these shotguns have a necked throat (i.e., neck) on the muzzle. With the use of throat reduction, the bullet has a longer range and is more accurate.

The bullets in the hands of the four people were different from the usual shotguns and even pistol rounds.

This is the later Foster type single-head bullet, its shape is like a hollow hemispherical shape, surrounded by rifling-like spirals, its function is not to make the warhead rotate in the barrel (shotgun is a smoothbore gun, no rifling), but after the warhead flies out of the muzzle, it slowly rotates under the action of air resistance, generating a certain stabilizing force to keep the warhead stable. This principle of stabilizing by moving the center of gravity forward and microspinning itself is similar to that of a shuttlecock in flight. In order to prevent the warhead from deforming, a spherical cardboard shell is installed in the cavity of the single-headed bullet during assembly, and then it is supported by a cartridge butt.

This kind of single-headed bullet has low technology content, and after Zhao Lie and the masters in the base studied it for a period of time, they quickly came up with a finished product. The material of the warhead is lead alloy, which is not a problem with the smelting technology of the Great Song Dynasty, and the casting is not complicated, as long as the mold is made, it is the same as producing hundreds of pieces a day.

Due to the large number of breech guns, the primer for making bullets consumes a lot, and it will not last long to rely on stocks. Therefore, the primer used in this batch of single-headed bombs was invented by skilled craftsmen made of gunpowder after years of research and exploration, inspired by modern primers, combined with the scientific and technological capabilities of the Great Song Dynasty.

This ancient earth fire cap is to crush the fire nitrate and realgar, mix it into a colloidal form with purified high wine and iron powder, and put it into the copper fire cap, and put a layer of lacquer on the surface after it is dried. In later generations, the fire cap made by this process was used in the folk for a long time to fire shotguns and earthen guns, and the effect was good.

Ding Xiaoyi and the other four stuffed the single-headed bullet into the barrel, clicked the straight barrel, and raised the gun together to aim at the grass target covered with Linggen armor eighty paces away.

At this moment, they have faint expectations and excitement, but also some gains and losses.

Eighty paces, in the past, this distance was the hit limit of a flintlock pistol, and it was not at all within the reach of a shotgun. It's twice as long as a shotgun, can it hit? The four of them didn't know the bottom of their hearts.

Zhao Lie has taken off his dragon robe and is dressed in a training uniform, just like when he was the chief instructor in Yushan. In order to ease the tension of the four people, he said loudly: "You just aim well, don't think about anything else." Whether you can shoot far or not is your business with a shotgun, and whether you can hit or not is your business. Just mind your own business! ”

The four of them took a deep breath in unison, their mood slowly calmed down, and the hand holding the gun stabilized.

"Ready—launch!"

Bang bang!

The muzzle of the gun was full of smoke, and the four targets eighty paces away exploded at the same time, and the armor pieces mixed with the grass stalks splashed in all directions - the grass man was covered with thick feather armor, which could knock the grass stalks out, indicating that the bullet had penetrated the armor. Eighty steps through the armor, this lethality is more amazing than a flintlock pistol.

Ding Xiaoyi and the other four people were pleasantly surprised, excited, with such bullets, the shotgunmen no longer need to withstand the rain of arrows, waiting for the enemy to rush closer, and they can be powerful outside the range of the bow and arrow. With two hundred such shotguns, what kind of military formation does not collapse? How much does this hit rate have to be increased to sniping with such a shotgun?

Ding Xiaoqi asked excitedly, "Can this gun go farther?" ”

Zhao Lie shook his head: "A few of you are either snipers or marksmen, so the target positions are all placed in the farthest gear." Eighty steps is the maximum effective range, and no matter how far it goes, it depends on the character. ”

The diameter of the single-headed bullet is large, and the wound after hitting the body is extremely terrifying, and its lethality is almost comparable to that of later rifle bullets. But also because the bullet is too large, the air resistance is greater, and the muzzle velocity of the bullet is much less than that of the bullet fired by the rifle. The effective range is only 80 paces, and the maximum range is only 150 paces. Still, this range is enough to crush the vast majority of bows and arrows in this era.

The appearance of single-headed bullets is tantamount to a significant upgrade in the performance of shotguns, in this era of pure cold weapons, two hundred such high-powered shotguns, plus the cooperation of hundreds of rapid-fire pistols, is enough to determine the outcome of a battle.

Zhao Lie walked up to Ding Xiaoyi and handed over the scope: "Bring this, with the shotgun, it can be a perfect sniper, and it will be helpful for your mission." ”

Ding Xiaoyi didn't answer, shook his head and said, "Your Majesty needs it more to command the battle." ”

Zhao Lie said with a smile: "I have already asked people to start researching the clairvoyant, and I believe that it will soon be developed and can replace the scope." Take it. ”

Although Ding Xiaoyi didn't know what a clairvoyant scope was, he knew that it was a strange object similar to a scope just by hearing the name, so he accepted the scope with great anticipation. Suddenly, there was something in front of her, but Zhao Lie stuffed a small box into her, and said solemnly: "This time I went north, every step is dangerous, take this, you can save your life at a critical moment." ”

Ding Xiaoyi took it, didn't open it, only put the shotgun on his back, glanced at Zhao Lie deeply, resolutely turned around, and quickly caught up with the female generals of Yanling's team.

Zhao Lie silently looked at Ding Xiaoyi in the distance, the sea breeze was blowing, and his hair was messy.