Chapter 21 Modern Catapults

Being a human being is like a candle, there is a point of heat, a point of light, giving people light and warmth. - Xiao Chunu

After Li Baoqiang inspected the city wall, he came to Liu Junsheng's repair workshop. Because when he returned to the village, Liu Junsheng excitedly told himself that he had developed a heavy weapon. Li Baoqiang was very curious, but the scene in front of him surprised him.

For a while, Li Baoqiang felt that he had traveled back to ancient times. A catapult stands in front of you. Li Baoqiang wiped his eyes, thinking that he had crossed over, although the current human society and civilization have almost regressed to a semi-primitive society, but subconsciously people are still modern people, and they can't accept ancient things for the time being, and catapults are too exaggerated.

In fact, Liu Junsheng was really wronged. Before Li Baoqiang led the team into the mountains for training, he instructed Liu Junsheng to develop long-range weapons, that is, artillery. But he didn't expect Liu Junsheng to consider that there was no gunpowder at hand and no production capacity, so the artillery was really impossible to develop, and he was also a lover of ancient weapons, so he used his brains to develop this catapult.

Hearing Liu Junsheng's explanation, Li Baoqiang smiled bitterly and nodded understandingly. Comforting Liu Junsheng: "There will be gunpowder, the Chinese are the ancestors of gunpowder, although we do not have the conditions now, but at least black powder can still be made." ”

Under Liu Junsheng's introduction, Li Baoqiang observed the trebuchet while recalling the relevant knowledge of the trebuchet.

Trebuchets or trebuchets or cannons are siege weapons that appeared in ancient times and the Middle Ages, which can cause damage by throwing stone projectiles, boulders or explosives into the enemy's city walls, cities or military formations.

When the world's first artillery was born in China, one of the heavy weapons used by our ancestors was this stone cannon for throwing stone projectiles - stone throwing machine. Therefore, the ancient character "cannon" is "stone" instead of "fire". It is also called a throwing cart, a stone cart, etc., in short, it is a long-range projectile weapon used to attack and defend the castle and use stones as cannonballs.

According to a military book of the Tang Dynasty, "The Divine Mechanism Enemy Taibai Yin Jing", the stone thrower is made of wood throughout, and a rotating shaft is placed horizontally above the artillery frame, and the long rod fixed on the shaft is called "tip", which plays a lever role. Those with only one wooden pole are called "single pins", and those with multiple wooden poles are called "multiple pins", and the more pins, the heavier and farther the stone projectiles that can be ejected.

Ancient cannon tips could reach up to 13 pins. The wood used for the shoots needs to be specially processed to make it both strong and resilient. In addition, because the stone thrower is made by the principle of lever, the length of the cannon tip and the ratio of the force arm and the resistance arm must be carefully calculated, and the length of the gun tip is generally about 2.5~2.8 zhang.

One end of the tip is tied with a "leather nest", which is loaded with stone bullets, and the other end is tied with a cannon cable, which is about several zhang long, and the cannon rope of the small cannon is 1~10 pieces of range, and the large cannon is more than 100 pieces, and each cannon is pulled by 1~2 people. When throwing stone bullets, one person first aims and sets the position, and the Lasso man pulls the cannon rope at the same time, and when one end of the cannon tether falls sharply, the leather socket at the other end is quickly thrown up. Stone projectiles are thrown violently by inertia, and the range can reach hundreds of paces.

After the advent of the "cannon", it became a heavy weapon in warfare. During the Three Kingdoms, the monarchs and ministers of various countries attached great importance to the manufacture and use of throwing cars. In the famous Battle of Guandu, Cao's army used a free-moving throwing cart to destroy Yuan's turrets and chariots, and this powerful throwing cart was called "Thunderbolt Car".

At that time, most of the throwing cars were fixed on the ground or the base was buried in the ground, and the mobility was poor, and the installation was time-consuming and laborious. Later, in order to facilitate movement, wheels were installed under the gun rack. And because the artillery rack is cumbersome, it is still very troublesome to change the direction of the projectile at any time. For this reason, people invented the "whirlwind throwing car".

This kind of cannon bolt can move and rotate horizontally, and can throw stone bullets in all directions, also known as "whirlwind cannon". During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, there was a "pai che" in which a cannon was mounted on a car, or a "pai boat" in which a cannon was mounted on a ship, which could be used as a heavy weapon at the time.

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The principle of the stone thrower in front of us is the same, but with many modern elements.

The base turned out to be the chassis of a small transporter, with four tires supporting the trebuchet. On top of the chassis are door-shaped wooden pillars that are more than one person high, and thick hemp ropes are neatly tied around the beams. This section of the beam acts as a blocking block when projecting, Liu Junsheng explained.

The catapult bar is a thick cedar tree, about 15 meters long, with its roots inserted into an even thicker log, which is framed horizontally on the chassis, and two steel rings that have been found out of nowhere are firmly tied to the chassis, and the logs can be rotated in the steel rings.

The bottom of the ejection rod and the chassis are connected by a tensile device for fitness purposes, an iron pot is fixed to the head of the ejection rod, and a decoupling device is slightly lower than the rod head, and a pull rope of the decoupling device itself is used for decoupling. A wire rope is attached to a winch on the chassis inside the decoupling hook.

Liu Junsheng directly found four people to demonstrate. I saw four people struggling to stir the winch, the ejection rod was slowly pulled from the vertical state to the tail of the catapult, the fitness tension machine was stretched, Liu Junsheng put a stone into the iron pot on the head of the catapult rod, and quickly pulled the rope ring of the decoupling device, only to see the tension device drive the catapult rod to rebound violently, and after hitting the beam, the stones in the pot flew out, directly over the city wall, and flew a full 100 meters before falling.

Li Baoqiang was directly petrified, is this okay? Li Baoqiang has been a soldier for more than five years, and he is quite familiar with hot weapons such as artillery and guns, but he is really speechless in the face of the strength of this ancient weapon, but in order to boost the morale of Liu Junsheng, he still showed extremely high enthusiasm and encouragement.

"It's better than nothing, after all, this is also a long-range attack weapon." Li Baoqiang encouraged everyone. Because of the tires, the trebuchet can move and turn the direction quickly, and the design of the winch makes the projection simple and fast, which should be a relatively strong long-range weapon in the village at this stage, Li Baoqiang decided to let Liu Junsheng make another one.

has been affirmed by Li Baoqiang, and Liu Junsheng is full of confidence. At this time, it was already evening, and Zhang Juncai came over to inform everyone that it was time for dinner. Yes, dinner, not dinner, not gruel soup, but a big meal.

On the way back to the conference room, Li Baoqiang saw the villagers with beaming faces and refreshed spirits, each holding a bowl of fragrant braised wild boar, returning to their respective settlements, starting their dinner, greeting each other, and children scurrying around in the crowd, as if they were celebrating the New Year.

As soon as Li Baoqiang entered the conference room, he smelled the smell of chili peppers, and he hadn't eaten chili peppers for a long time. There is also a bottle of wine on the table, Zhang Juncai's logistics support is quite in place, Li Baoqiang nodded secretly. Although Li Baoqiang put wine on Zhang Juncai, it seems that the people in power in the village are a little special, but Li Baoqiang has no special thoughts about this, in the crisis of the last days, the strong have their own efforts and enjoyment.

Professor Zhao asked Li Baoqiang to sit on the main seat and poured Li Baoqiang a glass of wine.

"Let's all raise a glass and thank Li Baoqiang for everything he has brought to everyone." Professor Zhao toasted sincerely. Li Baoqiang changed his bad words in the past at this time, and said heroically: "Everyone collects firewood and the flame is high, I believe that with everyone's united efforts, I hope that the village will get better and better!" With that, he drank the glass of wine in one go.

"Wild boar meat is so delicious." The fat man stuffed his mouth full of pieces of meat and muttered. Li Baoqiang also agrees very much that wild boar meat is born with a fishy smell, and it is difficult for ordinary people to do good, but this is difficult for Sichuan people, Sichuan people have a unique job in making meat, because they make good use of peppers and other seasonings.

Zhang Juncai proudly introduced the method: "This is called red-robed wild boar." Ingredients: 750g wild boar, 100g red pepper Seasoning: ginger, garlic, green onion, star anise, cinnamon, bay leaves, salt, monosodium glutamate, pepper, a little dark soy sauce. How to make it: Change the wild boar meat into 2cm square pieces, and put them into the water to remove them.

Put the pot on the fire, put in the wild boar meat and fry the oil, add ginger, garlic, star anise, cinnamon, bay leaves and various spices to stir-fry, add the broth to burn, add salt, monosodium glutamate, pepper, and dark soy sauce until all cooked. Put the pot on the fire, put in the prepared red pickled pepper, and fry it with the roasted wild boar meat until the pickled pepper has a sour and spicy taste, add the stock and cook. Characteristics: Wild boar is tender but not greasy, spicy and slightly sour. ”

After Zhang Juncai finished the introduction, he found that the bowl of wild boar in front of the fat man had been eaten, one per capita, and there was no more after eating, the rules were like this, and they must be followed. The fat man stared at the thin man Li Dayong's bowl, "You are so thin, can you finish eating this meat?" Li Dayong slowly chewed a piece of meat, smacked his mouth and said, "Yes, don't believe it, you continue to watch me eat." ”

Everyone burst into laughter, and Li Dayong finally avenged the teasing revenge of the fat man eating potato chips last time. In the frolic of the two talking about cross talk, a bowl of white rice, a bowl of wild boar, and a bowl of wild vegetable soup, everyone is quite satisfied.

Zhang Juncai and other locals began to put forward the Longmen array when they were full of food and drink: "Wild boar meat is fresh and tender, rich in game, high lean meat rate, low fat content, only 50% of domestic pigs, rich in nutrition, containing 17 kinds of amino acids and a variety of trace elements, and the linoleic acid content is 2.5 times higher than that of domestic pigs." Linoleic acid is recognized by the scientific community as the only most important and essential fatty acid in the human body, which is of great significance to the growth and development of the human body, especially for the prevention and treatment of coronary heart disease and cerebrovascular disease.

Eating wild boar skin can eliminate symptoms such as high fatigue and stunted growth of children, especially for human metabolic disorders, reproductive dysfunction and other diseases. According to the latest research, wild boar meat contains anti-cancer substances such as zinc and selenium, which is an ideal nourishing and health meat. ”

"I guess someone won't be able to sleep tonight thinking about my mother-in-law." Zhang Juncai quipped. The men in the conference room smiled smartly, and Zhao Xiaoxiao, Wu Chun and other girls blushed and hurriedly cleaned up the dishes and chopsticks. Before going out, Zhao Xiaoxiao stared at Li Baoqiang, and Li Baoqiang saw a little expectation of this girl in his eyes.

After happily setting up the dragon gate array for a while, Zhang Juncai told Li Baoqiang and Professor Zhao: "The salt is almost gone." ”