Did Hong Tao really plan to build artillery for Swan's cavalry that could be used? That's right, Hong Tao did not continue to despise the army this time, because the North American continent is too big, and Luzon Island is not a concept at all, and the navy alone obviously cannot protect it, and a strong army is necessary. Now Swan's cavalry numbered more than 500 people, and the number of Indians trained in shooting and marching was several times greater. But they only had shotguns, pistols, rifles, and crossbows, and none of the heavy weapons.

If it was just to deal with the Indians on the North American continent, Hong Tao felt that it was enough to have a shotgun, and he was very wealthy. But the real enemies of the future will not necessarily come from the North American continent, they will probably come from Europe or Asia or even Africa. These people are not natives with stone spears and arrows, front-loading smoothbore guns have appeared on the Mongolian battlefield for several years, and have been captured by the Mongolian army in formation, to say that the technology has not spread, Hong Tao himself does not believe it.

Even if the Great Cannibals, Central Asians, and Europeans do not have a large number of muskets at the moment, they will not be slow to equip them as long as there is a demand. At the end of the day, Swann was faced with a regular army armed with muskets, and shotguns alone could not guarantee the greatest victory at the lowest cost.

Moreover, Hong Tao does not think that the alliance should not have an army that can invade others, whether it is the navy or the army, it must be aggressive, it must be able to fight at any time, and it must be able to win, so that others will not dare to easily fight the idea of the alliance. Deterrence is not blown out, but won by real and practical victories.

If that were to be said, it was clear that light weapons alone would not meet the needs of the Army. If you encounter a castle, a bridge, a river, a mountain pass and other moats, you can only fill it with human lives without artillery, and the problem is that the alliance army only has quality and quantity, and cannot fill it. Therefore, Hong Tao has long wanted to equip the army of the alliance with a kind of artillery that is easy to carry and powerful. This time, taking advantage of the opportunity to manufacture new artillery for the navy, I happened to discuss with Qi Zu to see if I could get the army artillery in one go.

"It's easy to carry and powerful...... You have to be able to follow the cavalry through the mountains and mountains! Isn't this requirement too high, if the weight is light, the power is big, and if the power is big, the weight has to be heavy, I can't help it! Qi Zu heard Hong Tao's request and shook his head like a rattle. Since the existence of cannons, whether it is front-loading or rear-loading, and whether it is smoothbore or rifling, weight and power are always a pair of parameters that complement each other, and one will inevitably rise and the other will inevitably follow.

"I have a way, but you'll have to help me get something more delicate, and that's probably what it looks like. There's a fire cap in it, and the front of the fire cap needs a sturdy cover. Usually we throw it on the ground, and this cover will not touch the fire cap, only in the case of a strong impact, this cover will retreat and fire the fire cap. As for how powerful this is, I don't know yet, so I need to try slowly. "Qi Zu must have no way, if he has a way, what else will he do. Hong Tao took out another piece of paper, and there was no artillery on it, only a gyroscope-shaped thing.

"There's still threads on the back, so you're going to screw something on, right? You're going to make a flowering bomb! Listen to me, this thing can't be tried blindly, our medicine particles can't stand the high temperature and the vibration of the cannon when it is ejected, and it will explode when it hits, which is very dangerous. "Qi Zu is very sensitive in this regard, he was also one of the participants in the flowering bomb that Hong Tao made before, using a fire cap as a fuse, using the impact method to detonate the explosives in the warhead, this is not a genius idea, he has tried it a long time ago, and it didn't work at all.

If the chamber pressure of the rifled gun is too high, the collodion glue will be blown up by high temperature, high pressure, and violent shock in the chamber, and it will not be able to hit 100%. Black powder is possible, but its explosive power is too small, and small-caliber shells can't hold much powder at all, and even if they are successfully fired, they are not powerful. If you want to make a flowering bomb, I'm afraid you have to wait for a new, more passivated explosive to come out.

"Don't worry, I won't test the gun myself. This time it is indeed making a flower bomb, but this kind of flower bomb will not have high bore pressure, will not have high temperature, and logically speaking, it should not explode in the gun chamber. Here's the structure diagram, you see. For Qi Zu's warning, Hong Tao fully accepted, but resolutely did not change, he still had to test the flowering bomb and draw all the drawings.

“…… Can you shoot such a large cannonball with just one shotgun? Qi Zu looked at the picture drawn by Hong Tao and entered a state of confusion again. This picture is divided into several parts, and this strange little cannon is vividly depicted, as well as the planing diagram of the moment the shell is fired in the barrel.

Its structure is very simple, it is a round tube with a large lifting angle, there is a bracket below that can adjust the height angle, and there is a plate-sized base at the bottom of the tube, and it is over. Here's how it is drawn, with two hands holding a cannonball through the muzzle, and then the firing pin at the bottom of the barrel touches the fire cap at the tail of the cannonball, igniting a shotgun and the cannonball flies out.

The other is the outline and planing of the shell at all angles, if this cannon is a bit too simple, then this shell is too troublesome. Not only is it pointed at one end and thin at the other, but it is asymmetrical at both ends, and there are many small leaves on the tail, which are neatly arranged one by one. It was not clear why the cannonball was designed with such a complex shape, but he could see that the ****** at the end of the cannonball was actually a shotgun in a shotgun. Bargain Hong Tao plans to use the shotgun as a ****** to shoot this cannonball, is it done?

"Try it first, if it doesn't work, I'll add some ******, it's not difficult. The hard part is whether you can make the right barrel. This barrel can't be cast, it's too thick and heavy, and it needs to be rolled out with steel plates, and the thinner and lighter the better, without exploding the bore. Hong Tao felt that the difficulty of making shells was not high, and there was only one problem whether this kind of cannon could succeed, that is, the barrel.

The cannon that Hong Tao wants to build is a mortar, and its principle is very simple, how to shoot a fireball shell out of a paper tube hundreds of meters high, how to shoot a mortar shell. Hong Tao believes that there are only three problems to be solved in order to make mortars, one is the firing fuze, the other is the collision fuze, and the other is the barrel. The firing fuse is already available, and since the silver nitrate fire cap can meet the needs of bullets, it is naturally no problem to use it as a firing fuse for mortar shells. The collision fuze should not be too difficult, you just need to master the impact force, and don't let the collision of small forces trigger the shell fuse. There is one last problem left, which is the barrel.

The barrel of the mortar does not need to withstand much bore pressure, but the thickness and caliber of the bore wall are relatively high. If the caliber is too small, the charge of the shell will be a little small, and it will not make much sense to hit it. Hong Tao thinks that it makes sense to have a minimum of 60 millimeters, and it would be better if it could be 80 or even 100 millimeters.

With the current smelting and forging technology of Sun City and even Jinhe City, it is not possible to directly make seamless steel pipes, and even seamed ones cannot be mass-produced, so they can only be forged into steel plates with steel ingots and then semi-hand-rolled with fixed molds. There will always be a weld in the steel pipe made in this way, and now there is no electric welding equipment, the strength of this seam is very problematic, and it is difficult to say whether it can be stretched open without being pressed by the chamber.

But whether it succeeds or not, Hong Tao has to give it a try. He could not think of any kind of artillery other than mortars that could meet the requirements of following cavalry on a rapid march in the heart of North America, where there were no roads. No matter how small the land artillery is, it will cost hundreds of kilograms, and it will immediately have to lie on its stomach when it encounters mountains, woods, and swamps. The mortar does not have these problems, its weight is only tens to hundreds of kilograms, it is disassembled into three parts: the barrel, the gun carriage, and the gun mount, and people can carry the march on their backs, and put it on horseback without affecting the speed of the cavalry. It doesn't matter if it's a mountain, a wood, or a swamp, as long as the cavalry can pass through, it can pass.

The main thing is that the mortar can be made into a flowering shell, and the charge is still large, which is more lethal than the cannon and howitzer that fire solid shells. According to the current situation, artillery fire is mainly used to kill and injure the enemy's living force, mortars are still easy to use in siege warfare, don't think that hiding behind the city wall can dodge the shells, no one can keep it, just one city wall is used for hair.

(To be continued.) )