With the concerted efforts of the three magic weapons of its own passivation, external isolation, and cathodic corrosion, the first Virginia-class battleship was finally built and officially launched in the spring of 1251.

Hong Tao plans to build the first batch of 20 ships, and if their corrosion rate can be maintained for more than three years without major repairs, then it means that they can be used, and they can continue to be modified to build larger warships of the same type. If the corrosion rate is too fast, the all-wooden structure can only be reused, which can meet the needs of the navy in addition to not being able to build too large warships.

The problem of structural anti-corrosion has been solved for the time being, and the new type of warship cannot be regarded as a complete success, because the reason why this special type of ship can be used as a warship depends entirely on the new naval guns. Without this kind of naval gun, which has a long range, high accuracy, fast loading, light weight, and can adjust horizontal and vertical angles, the new warships can only be used as fast transport ships, and they are simply unable to conduct high-intensity naval battles.

"I've tried firing these guns dozens of times, and the reliability is definitely no problem, and the range and accuracy are also guaranteed, but the recoil is a little big, and Xiao Qi's new ship is a little narrow, and it seems that it can't be opened. But don't let the gun wagon lose its strength, the shipboard will definitely not be able to carry it. You have to be able to move, you have to be able to fix, you have a problem for me! "Qi Zu has not been idle these days, as long as the wedge bolt has the right idea, it is not difficult to manufacture, it is a big steel ingot itself, it is nothing more than the fit and the machining accuracy of the displacement bolt. For veteran craftsmen like them, it is still possible to do it by hand. It's just that the bolt is solved, and the rear-loading gun can be fired normally, but how to mount this kind of recoiled gun on the deck has become a big problem.

The 75 mm rear-loading guns of Qizu were fixed on a steel frame, and the pitch angle could be adjusted by a bolt in the lower part of the gun body. There are four wheels under the steel frame that can be pushed and pulled back and forth, and after tying the brake and retracting rigging, the gun truck moves back as a whole after driving, and then relies on manpower to pull the rigging and return the gun car to its position. In fact, it was no different from the original wooden gun carriage, but it was replaced with a stronger steel.

But there is a problem that Qi Zu has not been able to solve, that is, how to make this new naval gun rotate left and right. According to Hong Tao's design, these naval guns on the new battleship can no longer be fixed in the same way as the original naval guns, and can only be aimed at the target with the ship's side. They need to be adjusted to a certain extent from side to side, and the two guns in the bow and stern must be able to rotate 270 degrees, not too slowly.

This is too big a problem for a naval gun with a gun body weighing 600 kilograms and a gun carriage weighing more than 500 kilograms, which together weigh more than one ton. Even if a cannon is equipped with five gunners, it is impossible to pull it back and forth. However, there are simply not so many sailors and gunners on the new battleships, and one gun is equipped with two people at most. It is neither humane nor reasonable to let two people push a one-ton naval gun to move its position left and right, and it cannot be pushed at all.

"You still have to install a fuse to ignite this cannon?" Hong Tao didn't care about the problem of the gun carriage first, he had been tossing the new ship with Wen Xiaoqi, and he didn't care much about Qi Zu's rear-loading gun research and development, this was the first time he had seen its launch at the shooting range, and he immediately saw an inappropriate place.

Qi Zu's rear-loading cannon really loads shells from behind the barrel, but the firing ignition device is no different from the front-loading gun. Open the bolt, stuff the pointed shell into the chamber through the hole in the bolt, and stuff a medicine bag with collodion glue into it; Close the bolt, stuff the strip and cap through a small hole in the tail of the barrel, and finally fire with a small hammer. Although the fuse was replaced with a medicine strip and a fire cap, and the torch was changed to a hammer, there was no difference in essence.

“…… What do you mean? "Qi Zu let Hong Tao say confused, aren't all cannons fired like this? Rear loading guns are just for more convenient loading, rifling is only for farther and more accurate, what does it have to do with ignition and firing?

"It means that you can put the warhead and the cartridge together like a bullet, and then make a firing device on the bolt, and fire the fire cap like a shotgun trigger, and then shoot the bullet out, and boom...... Open the latch, unshell, load new shells, close the latch, and fire again! Hong Tao was amused by Qi Zu's dead brain, so he simply pulled out his revolver, compared the barrel to the barrel of a cannon, and compared the bullet to a cannonball, and demonstrated the process of loading, firing, reshelling, and reloading.

“…… Cough! I'm really old, I've made so many guns, I didn't expect that the cannonball was just a large bullet......" Without Hong Tao to explain too much, Qi Zu could understand that he was limited by the name Cannon.

"Actually, it's pretty much the same, but the recoil of the shell is too great, and we can't stand behind the gun truck to pull the trigger, it's too dangerous. See if you can make this trigger into a pull, tie it with a rope, stand far away and pull it, even if it blows up. With this lesson, Hong Tao didn't dare to expect Qi Zu to consider the problem more comprehensively, so it was safer to say it first.

"Yes, pull it with a rope! It's not that difficult, I'll get the hole in the barrel behind the bolt, as long as I have enough strength to fire the fire cap. You're still very smart, but I'm not looking for you about the bolt, it's about the gun mount. You have to move it from side to side, it's still a small cannon, and if you make a bigger caliber in the future, I really can't think of how to turn it. "It was not difficult for Qi Zu to add a crash behind the cannon latch, but what he was most worried about was how to turn the cannon body.

"I can't tell you this question, you guys come here, dig a pit for me here, and then go get two three or four meters long steel rails, I'll be useful." How to make the gun rotate left and right is actually closely related to the problem of reducing the recoil of the artillery, and if you solve one, it will be all solved.

This requires a more complex mechanical artillery mount to solve, and the artillery that used this structure in later generations was called a frame anneal, and similar to the barrel annealed gun. The latter is more technically demanding and requires hydraulics to use. Now Hong Tao can't figure out the tube withdrawal device, so he can only play the relatively simple technique of the artillery first. Since it's a relatively complex device, I'm afraid I can't understand it just by saying, so let's get started and experiment.

The soil pit was quickly dug according to Hong Tao's instructions, and it was deep at one end and shallow at the other, forming a slope of about 20 degrees. The two rails were also fastened to the slope by steel nails, exactly the same width as the wheels of the gun carriage. At this time, Hong Tao began to direct the craftsmen present to lift the cannon from the gun carriage, and then hoist the gun carriage to the steel rails, and then put the cannon on it. And that's not all, in front and behind the pit, you had to smash a couple of wedges, and then pull the front and rear of the gun carriage with ropes with pulley blocks.

"Reload, get ready to shoot!" After checking the gun carriage, rails, and rigging, there was no problem, and Hong Tao took the lead and hid behind the bunker and gave the firing order.

"Boom ......"

"You can't do this, the muzzle is raised too high, and the slope is a bit big." After a bang, everyone looked behind the bunker and found that the gun carriage had not slid backwards along the rails, but had derailed and flipped over. Although Qi Zu didn't quite understand what Hong Tao was going to do, he probably understood the role of the gun carriage and the railroad tracks, and proposed an improvement plan with his professional vision.

"Well, do as you say, and then make a new gun carriage, so that the artillery can also shoot horizontally on this ramp, and by the way, change the ramp according to the slope you think is appropriate, I guarantee that it will succeed." The failure of the test made Hong Tao very faceless, he only knew a general principle, the specific angle and technical details were not clear, to make this kind of erection device suitable, it had to rely on Qi Zu and their craftsmen who were familiar with mechanical manufacturing to figure it out.

In fact, the early erection structure was as simple as the ramp that Hong Tao made, there were no rails, just a rut with the same width as the gun wheel, and then put the gun car wheel into the rut. As soon as the cannon was fired, the gun carriage was pushed back along the rut by recoil. Since the rear was uphill, the recoil of the gun carriage was greatly consumed. When the recoil was exhausted, the gun carriage with the cannon began to slide down the rut again under its own weight, thus returning to the deepest position at the bottom of the pit, which was the initial position of the gun carriage.

This is a complete set of setback and reset devices, which can allow the gun to automatically offset the recoil without relying on manpower after the firing is completed, and can basically return to its original position. Don't look at it as a dirt pit, it can reset the cannon as soon as possible, speed up the loading and aiming time, eliminate the heavy manual labor of the artillerymen, and greatly improve the firing speed and accuracy of the artillery.

The frame retreat means that the artillery retreats along with the frame, and on this basis, later generations have come up with a tube retreat device to counteract the recoil. That's even more advanced, the gun basically doesn't move, only the barrel will retract backwards, and the recoil will be canceled out by hydraulic or pneumatic devices, and then it can continue firing immediately, with higher reloading speed and shooting accuracy.

In just one day, Qi Zu led the craftsmen to rivet a new gun carriage from various types of I-beams. This gun mount has a bit of a strange shape, high in the front and very low in the back, like a right-angled triangle lying down, and the guns are fixed to the long side of this triangle. If this gun mount is placed on flat ground, its muzzle will point at the sky at an angle of twenty degrees. But put on the rail of the ramp, there is exactly one high in the front and low in the back, and one low in the front and high in the back, which complements each other. When the angle is adjusted without a screw, the gun naturally becomes level with the ground.

"Boom ......"

"Oops...... Hold! Hold! Don't let it slip away too quickly! "With the new car, the slope of the track has been readjusted and the first test shot was a success. The gun carriage did not derail and overturn again, but climbed along the rails towards the slope. After climbing a distance of about two meters, and after the recoil was consumed, the gun carriage paused slightly, and was pulled down by gravity. Qi Zu was afraid that the speed of the artillery cart rushing down was too fast, so he smashed his cannon into the front of the earthen pit, jumped out directly from behind the bunker, and yelled at the craftsmen who were responsible for pulling the rope, until the artillery cart returned smoothly and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Cheng, your method is very good, you don't need someone to push it, but there is one thing, you can't dig a hole on the deck, right?" Running to the side of the gun carriage, he looked down at the imprint painted on the ground, Qi Zu was very satisfied with this way of retreating, this thing was very suitable for the army artillery. But the problem came again, the ship could not dig a pit, the tiled track slowed down very little, it is estimated that after the cannon was fired, the gun carriage rushed into the sea from the other side of the ship with the cannon.

"There's no dirt pit on deck, you can't make a slope out of steel! It is also a triangle, longer than the gun carriage, don't even get a track on it, and there are no wheels under the gun carriage, just make a steel groove to let the gun carriage rub back in it, so that the retreat distance of the gun carriage can be reduced. The new gun carriage is enough to hold the gun, there is no need to think about transportation, it is mounted on the deck, there is no need to run around, so I think it can also reduce the weight. This time, Hong Tao did not conduct another experiment, but squatted on the ground and drew a sketch for Qi Zu with a small branch. This device is the original naval gun mount and retreat device, which was used until the First Sino-Japanese War, when many large-caliber naval guns on warships used this mode to deal with recoil problems, and the same was true for large-caliber naval guns weighing several tons.

"Supposedly, if there were no wheels, I think the slope would have been reduced so that it wouldn't have gone down too fast. Then install the front and rear ziplines, and maybe one or two people will be able to put the gun carriage back in place! But you just solved the recoil problem, what about turning from side to side? Just tell me together, don't tease me as an old man. Hong Tao painted very specifically, and according to Qi Zu's understanding of machinery, he understood more thoroughly how this device should be built than Hong Tao. Since Hong Tao can solve the problem of resetting the front and rear of the gun carriage so easily, he should also have an idea about the problem of rotation.

"Hey, hey, it's simpler, I find that you're really old, and you can't bend your brain. Put a few wheels under the gun carriage that can be turned, and then install a circle of steel rails on the deck, if we don't turn the gun itself, even the gun carriage will turn around together. As many angles are needed, the rails can be installed at as many angles as possible, and one-third of a turn is enough on both sides, and three-quarters of a turn on the bow and stern. The two ends of the rails were equipped with anti-slip steel blocks, and the gun carriage could not turn around, so that the gunners at the bow of the ship would not be confused and fire directly at the stern. "For Qi Zu's question, Hong Tao didn't even draw a picture. This simple device is enough to describe with a mouth, not only to answer questions, but also to spray poison, and the old man can't let it go.

"Go, go, go! Discuss with Xiao Qi to renovate the deck, don't mess around with me, my brain is messed up by you! "The older Qi Zu gets, the more afraid he is of others saying that he is old, he himself says that it is okay, others do not succeed, and Hong Tao does not succeed.

(To be continued.) )