If steel pushed cold weapons warfare to its peak, then explosives were the watershed moment of the hot weapons age.

Before the advent of explosives, it was black powder, or gunpowder, that dominated the wars of the thermal weapon era. Gunpowder was invented by the alchemists of the Tang Empire, and initially, no one thought that gunpowder could be used in war, for example, in the Tang Empire, before gunpowder was applied to war, the biggest use was to make fireworks, firecrackers. As the Tang Imperial army began to equip with artillery, gunpowder appeared on the battlefield, and then the appearance of muskets opened the prelude to the war in the era of hot weapons. But gunpowder is a low-energy explosive after all, and its effectiveness is quite limited. And what really made the war fully enter the era of hot weapons, and eliminated the cold weapons such as sabers, spears, bows and arrows from the battlefield, it was explosives in the modern sense.

Explosives can be said to be the crystallization and product of modern science, the development of chemistry, physics, mathematics and other disciplines has allowed scientists to discover that the world is made of molecules, and it is after the birth of the new term "molecule" that chemistry developed. It can be said that chemistry itself is closely related to production and life, but the first thing to apply the knowledge of chemistry to practice is war, because it is chemistry that explains the basic structure of things, so that chemists can find a way to make more powerful "gunpowder". It was at this time that dynamite was born.

The development of explosives was not very smooth either, and all chemists had a common goal, which was to find a chemical composition that was more stable, easier to produce, and at the same time capable of releasing greater energy in an instant. Perhaps, the original purpose of these chemists was not to use explosives in warfare, for example, when Luo Jiaqian, who established the "Imperial Royal Roche Award", finally synthesized a high-energy explosive after hundreds of failed tests, his purpose was to introduce explosives to the mining ground to help the miners, but he never thought that the explosives he invented would become a sharp weapon for killing.

100 years before the First Global War. It was the period when explosives developed most rapidly and the transformation of the army. In the history of the development of explosives, there are three types of explosives that are of greatest significance.

One is yellow explosives, that is, picric acid. This was the first out-of-ground explosive, and the first high-energy explosive, which was originally used as yellow fuel. It was also with the yellow explosives that other high-energy explosives quickly appeared. And eventually replaced the military use of black powder. The second is thundermercury, the main use of thundermercury is not to make bombs or shells, but as a high-energy initiating charge, that is, to detonate other explosives, it is also the emergence of thundermercury, for the modern sense of bombs, shells laid the foundation. The third is TNT. Chemically known as trinitrotoluene, this is the first explosive with stable properties that does not explode even when hit by a bullet, and it is also the most widely used explosive, thus enabling explosives to be widely used in warfare. Don't worry too much about security.

In the first global war, high-energy explosives became the "star" on the battlefield. Whether it is the shells fired by artillery, the propellant needed to fire the shell, or the propellant in the bullet used in the firearm, or the mine, or the bomb, etc., all of them are inseparable from explosives. A wide variety of explosives are widely used on the battlefield, allowing the performance of weapons to be multiplied, tenfold, or even a hundredfold. This directly led to a geometric increase in casualties in the war, which eventually changed the face of the war completely. In the same way, it was the advent and large-scale use of explosives that led to the creation of a variety of new weapons.

In the case of machine guns, which determined the ground tactics of the first global war, the basic principle is to use the gunpowder generated when the bullet is fired to reset the bolt and push the next bullet into the chamber. Push the firing pin to achieve the purpose of continuous shooting. To be able to do this, it is necessary to have a high-energy explosive to act as a propellant to create a fixed bullet, and it is impossible to achieve this effect with the previous sub-loading bullet with black powder as the propellant.

The same is true of artillery, before the appearance of thundermercury, artillery fired solid bullets, and grapeshot shells with surface killing effect, but these shells could not explode. Its lethal power and killing area are quite limited. And with high-energy explosives. and the appearance of thunder and mercury, which provided the basis for the creation of explosive shells, and the power of artillery ground had to be doubled, and from then on, artillery shells were no longer solid, but relied on shrapnel and the shock wave generated by the explosion to produce a lethal effect.

Explosives themselves are a direct manifestation of technological progress, and they also have a direct impact on the face of warfare. This is like the electronic technology, aviation technology, material technology, and even atomic energy technology that appeared and improved after the first global war, influencing the war in many ways. Fundamentally speaking, on the stage of the second global war, explosives are still the absolute protagonists, whether it is artillery shells, bombs dropped by aircraft, torpedoes fired by submarines, in the end, these munitions have to have a destructive effect, they still have to rely on explosives!

It is precisely because explosives are the main part of ammunition that in terms of ammunition production, explosives do not become the main body, and no matter what kind of ammunition they are, they must ultimately rely on explosives to exert their power. When Tan Renhao began to get in touch with the knowledge of ammunition, the first thing he needed to understand was the production method of explosives and the manufacturing cost of explosives.

Unlike the chemists of the past, explosives are no longer manufactured in laboratories, but are produced on a large scale by chemical factories and explosives factories. There are many raw materials for the manufacture of explosives, such as sulfur and saltpeter, which were used to make black powder, which are still very important. In addition, oil, coal, and even starch can be used to make explosives. The manufacture of explosives itself is a chemical reaction, and the chemical plant is like a huge chemical laboratory, except that it no longer uses glassware, but huge distillation columns, chemical reactors and other modern industrial equipment.

After the explosives are manufactured, they are transported to the ammunition factory, which loads them into bullets, shells, bombs, torpedoes. No matter what kind of ammunition it is, except for small ammunition such as bullets, other ammunition is relatively similar in terms of charge. Generally, there are only two methods, one is the filling method, and the other is the casting method.

The loading method is to put solid explosives into the ammunition that has not yet been sealed, and then seal the ammunition. This method is relatively simple, and the process required is not complicated, but it has many shortcomings. The first is extremely unsafe, slightly careless. It is easy to detonate explosives and cause unimaginable consequences. The second is inefficiency, the production speed is quite slow, and it is difficult to improve production efficiency. Finally, the accuracy of the ammunition is not high, which will eventually affect the effectiveness of use. And this method was mainly used during the last war, and now it is generally only used to make some special land, and the output is not very large. Moreover, ammunition that does not require high production capacity, such as explosives in the warhead of torpedoes, is loaded in this way.

The casting method is to cast the explosive in a liquid state into the ammunition that has basically been formed, and then install the detonator, or reserve the detonator position, and encapsulate the ammunition to complete the production. This method of production has a rather high temperature requirement and can neither obtain the detonation point of the explosive. At the same time, the explosives must be melted and presented in a liquid state, so the requirements for the production process are quite high. In addition, it is only suitable for large-scale production, if it is produced on a small scale. The cost simply can't come down. Therefore, this production method is mainly used to produce artillery shells, aerial bombs and other ammunition with huge consumption. Especially shells. For example, in the production of artillery shells, the factory first manufactures the projectile body, and leaves a place for the detonator to be installed at the warhead site, which is actually a hole with a small diameter, and then injects the liquid explosive into the projectile body, and finally allows the explosive to solidify, and the projectile of the shell is basically completed. In fact, there are not many manufacturing steps, and it is quite simple. It is very suitable for high-volume production in an assembly line manner.

After a general understanding of the production process of ammunition, Tan Renhao also knew it in his heart. In terms of cost, the proportion of explosives occupied by explosives is actually quite small. First of all, explosives are the product of large-scale production in chemical plants, and the price of raw materials will not be high, and the proportion of explosives in each ammunition is quite small. Like what. The charge of a 400-mm armor-piercing projectile is only a dozen kilograms, the charge of a high-explosive shell is only more than 100 kilograms, and the total weight of the shell is more than 1,000 kilograms. The charge of a 500-kilogram aviation armor-piercing projectile is only a few tens of kilograms, and the charge of a 500-kilogram high-explosive bomb is also about 200 kilograms. As a result, the proportion of explosives in the cost of ammunition is not large, and it can even be said that it is very small.

It is not the price of raw materials that really determines the cost of ammunition, and the raw materials used to make ammunition will not be expensive. For example, artillery shells are generally made of alloy steel, or even iron. Bombs are no exception. Only some of the more special shells, such as the high-velocity armor-piercing shells used in tanks, are made of tungsten alloy. And the Type 27 400-mm armor-piercing projectile, which is ready to be put into production in 27, also uses a large number of tungsten alloys. But relatively speaking, the price of these materials will not be very high.

It is labor that makes up the main cost of ammunition. With the exception of special ammunition, most of the production costs of ammunition are dominated by labor costs. And the labor cost is concentrated in the later stage of production, especially in the packaging process, for the sake of insurance, now the empire has not yet adopted the way of machine production to package ammunition, and the ammunition needs to be packaged by manual by workers. And these workers are paid, which is the cost of labor.

The situation of special ammunition is more special, for example, one-third of the cost of 120 mm and 80 mm VT shells used by the Navy is the cost of electronic detonation devices. This is relatively low, the cost of the torpedo, its engine, and the control system (there were no guided torpedoes at that time) accounted for half, or even more than half. Therefore, the special ammunition must be counted separately.

In addition to ammunition that uses explosives, there are also a number of ammunition that does not use explosives, or does not use explosives, such as incendiary bombs, rockets, and so on. The cost of these munitions also includes the cost of incendiary agents, propellants, and launch systems. Take incendiary bombs, for example, because they are mainly made of incendiary agents, and the price of mixed incendiary agents is higher than explosives, so their cost is higher than ordinary bombs. And the rocket involves the launch system, and the cost of the launch system is even higher than the rocket, which is another additional price.

Tan Renhao spent two days studying the cost composition of ammunition, and with the previous efforts on the plane, he also saved a lot of effort. In addition, he made simple calculations on the cost of more than a dozen major types of ammunition purchased by the Imperial Navy, and eventually found that it was not easy to drastically reduce the purchase price of ammunition.

In fact, the price of ammunition is relatively low, especially the unit price. In addition, the production of ammunition is more complicated, and the so-called ammunition factories are mostly only responsible for the production of the projectile body, as well as the final assembly. Take the 120 mm VT shells produced by the Qingdao Arsenal at that time as an example, the arsenal only produced the body of the ammunition, as well as the detonator, while the explosives were purchased from the chemical factory, and the electronic detonation device was purchased from the electronics factory. Therefore, in the price of 120 mm VT bombs, Qingdao Arsenal only accounts for about 30%, and other price factors are in the hands of other factories. And the aviation torpedo is even more complicated, the Qingdao Arsenal is even only responsible for the final assembly, and almost all the components are purchased from other manufacturers. As a result, if you want to control the price of ammunition, you will have to negotiate with more manufacturers.

The number of ammunition procured is also the largest, if the number of battleships is calculated in the number of singles, and the number of aircraft is calculated in hundreds, then the ammunition is calculated in tens of thousands. Based on the number of purchases in 26 years, the most procured number of 155-mm artillery shells was 15.2 million rounds. In terms of bombs, the number of 250-kilogram aviation high-explosive bombs purchased is 1.5 million. In terms of torpedoes, the number of 650-mm heavy torpedoes purchased was 25,000 pieces. There are countless other ammunition, and 5 billion rounds of general-purpose machine gun ammunition were bought, and an additional 1 billion rounds had to be purchased in October. 25 million rounds of 80-mm mortar shells were bought, and they could barely get to this point until the end of the year. Therefore, even if the price of these ammunition is not high, as long as the unit price can be reduced by one dollar, or a few dollars, it can save a lot of money for the navy. Of course, the unit price of some ammunition is less than one yuan, while others are as high as tens of thousands of yuan. This can be regarded as a special case in the procurement of ammunition.

After hurriedly understanding the basic technology, production methods, and how to calculate the cost of ammunition, Tan Renhao followed Gan Yongxing to Qingdao, ready to start negotiations with ammunition manufacturers!