The Western Sui Empire had already entered the age of firearms as early as the Hechi Tibu era. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 infoIn the history of the Western Sui Empire, there are three people who have made outstanding contributions to the development and use of firearms, they are Li Mo, Li Ermi, and Dai Zi.

Li Mozi, Anping, Fuping County, Xi'an Prefecture, Shaanxi Province, and the official worship of the firearms supervisor of the Western Sui Empire.

Lee Elmi, a Belgian, was appointed as the head of the Western Sui Imperial Hospital for curing the malaria of Emperor Tianyu in his early years, and his official rank was from Sanpin. In his early years, Lee Elmi lived in Belgium with his mother and two older brothers, and his family was poor. In order to make ends meet, the young Li Elmi had to work as an apprentice in a gun workshop until his father brought them to Lanzhou, and life improved. But this experience laid the foundation for his later achievements. Subsequently, Li Elmi became a non-commissioned officer (non-commissioned officer: a military lord during the Western Sui Empire), known as the gun non-commissioned officer Li Elmi.

Dai Zi, China's Sui Dynasty firearms manufacturers. The word is open, the number is cultivated, Han nationality, Zhejiang Renhe (now Hangzhou) people. He is proficient in the art of war, understands astronomical algorithms, and is good at poetry, calligraphy and painting. It has made "Lianzhu Fire Gun" and "Child Mother Cannon". He once lived in Yangzhou, and in his later years in Liaodong, he called himself an old man who cultivated tobacco, was born in the 22nd year of Sui Tianyou, and died in the 38th year of Sui Zhaowu. Dai Zi is erudite and versatile, proficient in astronomy, calendars, canals, poetry and painting, historical books, etc., and is a famous manufacturer of machinery and weapons. He was born in a family of officials and was brilliant since childhood. Under the influence of his father, Dai Zi fell in love with mechanical engineering as a teenager, and once made a variety of firearms by himself, one of which could hit targets at a distance of 100 paces.

In 1620 A.D., in order to celebrate the birth of the eldest son of the Great Khan of the Hechi Ti Department, Li Mo, who was only a small craftsman at the time, made gorgeous fireworks. Subsequently, Li Mo was promoted to craftsman and served as the newly formed firearms superintendent. In the following two or three years, Li Mo developed many firearms and experienced actual combat verification.

Firearms of the early Western Sui Empire.

The early firearms of the Western Sui Empire were relatively crude, and most of them were improved and demonstrated based on the principles and techniques of firearms manufacturing in the Ming Dynasty.

Swarm

A swarm of bees is also known as a rocket. It is a weapon that binds a powder keg to an ordinary arrow and uses gunpowder gas to propel it to achieve the purpose of killing.

The Ming Dynasty swarm rockets, also known as the fire chariot, were the trolleys used to launch rockets in the Ming Dynasty in China, and were early multiple rocket launchers. It predates the official use of rocket artillery by European countries by more than five hundred years. The fire fighting vehicle has both salvo firepower similar to modern rocket artillery and rapid transfer mobility. It also has some basic performance of modern combat vehicles in terms of firepower, mobility and protection, so it occupies an important position in the history of weapon development and is also one of China's outstanding creations in rocket artillery.

However, the firearms of the Ming Dynasty had many shortcomings, among which ballistic instability became its biggest shortcoming, which made it have to use dense firing to make up for this shortcoming. The second is the difficulty of its rearmament, which can only carry out one round of effective strikes at a limited range of 300 meters, and its advantages are not obvious for large-scale cavalry units of ethnic minorities, which is why the Ming army gradually abandoned it.

Subsequently, the Western Sui people began to transform a swarm of rockets. In terms of launchers, the original box launcher was changed to a honeycomb shape to facilitate the reloading of ammunition. Secondly, the rockets of the Western Sui are no longer simply made of ordinary arrows. Instead, blunt-tipped "heavy-flicking" arrows are used, powder kegs are centered, and iron homogeneous feathers are added to the tail to enhance the stability of its flight. In the case of gunpowder, regular stamping tablets were used to achieve the stability of combustion.

A swarm of rockets played an important role in the early days of Emperor Tianyou, and even in the later period. Especially in the war against the West, the position of the rocket remains unshakable. A swarm of rockets became the main weapon of the Western Sui Empire against the intensive charge of the Western cavalry.

The Western Sui people conducted a large number of experiments on a swarm of bee firearms, and finally summed up many practical ways to use them.

In the book it is mentioned that "...... It is the mound of all soldiers. Before the battle, the two grenadiers were divided into red and yellow compatible rockets and placed them in the hive, saying that there were 32 rockets. The length of the red and yellow fire twist is similar, but the height is not equal, then it will be ignited until the ignition, and the three or five breaths will be sent in groups, and the adjacent ones will not be contrary to each other. After one round, the reload is only six or seven breaths! If you don't reach the enemy, the arrow has been restored! ”

The current archaeological discoveries show that the reason why the launcher of a swarm of bee rockets during the Western Sui Empire adopted the honeycomb type is reasonable. First, it is easy to carry with a honeycomb type. Its size is not large, which is conducive to carrying and transporting. Second, it is conducive to reloading ammunition. The Ming Dynasty's fire-mounted chariot faded out of the war because of the inconvenience of reloading ammunition, so the Western Sui people adopted a honeycomb launcher through improvement. In this way, although the amount of ammunition is not as large as that of a firefighting vehicle, its small size makes it easier to form a dense formation. In terms of reloading ammunition, the Western Sui people are even more handy. Thirdly, it is conducive to irregular launches. Modern rocket artillery uses this way of firing to prevent two adjacent rockets from being launched too short between them, which is easy to affect each other's trajectory or collide and cause accidents. Honeycomb launcher, the combustion length of the rocket twist is different, of course, the launch time is not the same, and the use of two different lengths of the twist to distinguish is used to ensure the safety of the launch.

In terms of specific use methods, the West Sui people creatively developed the transcendent launch method.

What is transcendence? This is a technical term used for high-speed strike weapons, like modern heavy machine guns, which basically use this type of shooting.

The transcendent shooting method is the first creation of the Western Sui people, also known as the accumulation of more shooting method! Because the rocket uses heavy arrows, coupled with its type factor, the drag is large. This makes it so that in the process of shooting, if you aim directly at the target, then before you reach the target, due to gravity and drag factors, the rocket has been inserted into the soil and loses its striking ability. Of course, at a range of fifty meters, such an effect is not significant, but it loses its range advantage. In the later period of the Western Sui Empire, the range of rockets was generally about 500 meters. Because of this, the people of the Western Sui thought of accumulating shots! As a result, the Accumulation Shooting Method was developed, that is, the Transcendence Shooting Method.

It allows the rocket to be a warp strike weapon that can be used behind cover. The launched rocket, which can fly over five hundred meters, forms an oval-shaped dispersion surface that rains down from the sky. At this moment, many of us should understand why the Western Sui people use heavy arrows in rockets, right?

Flying Thunder!

The Flying Mine is actually a grenadier. The principle is very simple. It is to use a coil-welded steel barrel of about the caliber as the firing barrel. Use a small medicine bag at the bottom to blow the large medicine bag out. The fuses of the medicine bags are connected in series with each other, and some of the two medicine bags are also separated by jujube boards. In fact, the gas kinetic energy of gunpowder was used to launch the shell, but the shell turned into an explosive package.

Flying Thunder uses the shock wave and shock wave generated by the explosion to kill and injure enemy troops, so many battlefield records in the West have described this way. “…… The soldiers were intact, but dead. There is no damage to the surface, but the internal organs are damaged! ”

Later, the Western Sui people mixed nearly ten kilograms of medicine bags, rusty iron, sharp stones, porcelain tiles and other materials to enhance their lethality.

Flying Thunder is one of the main weapons of the Western Sui Empire against the dense infantry formation of the West, which makes Western countries fearful! Because of its terrifying lethality, and the tragic situation that followed the death of its soldiers, the West had to quickly adapt its infantry tactics modeled on Turkey, and trench warfare came into being.

Skyfire

Tianhuo is actually an improved version of Feilei, which has higher requirements in terms of workmanship and operation. The principle of Skyfire is roughly the same as that of Flying Thunder, except that there are some differences in firing shells.

Flying Thunder fires explosive packets, while Skyfire fires pottery capsule-shaped projectiles. This projectile is not simple, it is shaped like a capsule and is made of pottery. Why is that? Originally, Skyfire was used as a long-range flame projector. The ceramic projectile was filled with primer and fire oil. What is Fierce Fire Oil? Fierce fire oil is actually oil, which is extremely flammable, and it is viscous, it cannot be extinguished by burning fire water, and it can burn on the water surface! This makes it an ideal material for arson. The ceramic projectile shattered on touch, and the primer exploded, igniting a fire.

In the early days, it was used as a weapon to burn down enemy military installations, and was mostly used in siege of cities. Later, due to its long range, low cost, and large dispersion area after arson, it became the main weapon of the Western Army to block the enemy's marching path.

mortar

The Tiger Squat Cannon is an artillery piece equipped by the Qi Army. In order to facilitate shooting, the cannon was placed in a fixed position, much like the appearance of a tiger squatting, hence the name. The Tiger Squat Cannon is powerful, and it can blow up the enemy's city wall with 50 Tiger Squat Cannons in two rounds. The most commonly used firearm in Qi Jiguang's army, this lightweight artillery has a thin barrel and a short range (500 meters), suitable for mountain warfare, mobile and flexible, and has the same use as today's mortars due to its front loading, which can be launched at a large elevation angle and equipped with a large number of grassroots troops.

The above is the tiger squat cannon of the Qi family's army, and the mortar commonly equipped by the army of the Western Sui Empire is evolved on the basis of the tiger squat cannon of the Qi family's army, and it has also become the originator of modern mortars.

In 1621, Li Mo, the firearms supervisor at the time, received an order to urgently develop an artillery cannon for the cavalry troops. The main problem of light and flexible, rapid firepower, low price and large-scale installation stems from the fact that under the technical conditions of the time, how to manufacture artillery that meets the above conditions.

We know that the Western Sui was a state founded on the basis of the former Mongol Hechiti tribe. Originally, the ethnic minorities were indeed no worse than the Central Plains in metallurgical forging, and in some places they were even much stronger than the Central Plains. For example, the Western Sui Dynasty had already begun to use the steel clamping method to forge Damascus knives on a large scale in the era of the Hechi Tibu to assemble the troops. In addition, there are advanced smelting and forging technologies such as carburizing forging treatment.

However, there is one thing that restricts the development of the Western Sui military, and that is the problem of raw materials. At that time, most of the iron materials of the Hechiti Department came from Qiuci, Hotan and other places in the Western Regions. Although there was a border trade between the Hechiti and the Ming court, due to the ban of the Ming court, only a small amount of iron flowed into the Hechiti tribe until the discovery of the Urat iron ore. However, the Urat iron ore is rich in pyrite. Sulfur is a harmful element in the iron smelting industry. During smelting, the sulfur is partially reduced into pig iron, and the sulfur contained in steel is prone to "hot brittleness" during its thermal processing.

Iron smelted from the Urat iron ore could not be used as a forging material for gun barrels at all. Therefore, how to make the most artillery with the least amount of "imported steel" became Li Mo's first consideration.

After continuous demonstration and experiments, Li Mo finally made the Tiger Squat Cannon version of the Hechi Ti Department according to the principle of the Tiger Squat Cannon.

The Hechi Tibu Tiger Squat Cannon is absolutely superior to the Qijia Army Tiger Squat Cannon in terms of type, because the West Sui Tiger Squat Cannon is the prototype of the modern mortar, in order to distinguish it, we will name it a mortar here.

Mortar features:

1. Light weight. This is fully in line with the technical requirements put forward by the military of the Hechiti Division. The whole weight of the mortar is only about a kilogram (the caliber is different, so the weight is different).

2. Simple structure. The mortar is composed of four parts: the gun body, the gun carriage, the base, and the measuring standard. The barrel is long; The gun carriage is a bipod equipped with high and low poles; The main component of the base to bear the recoil, and at the same time, together with the bipod, play the role of supporting the mortar body; The gauge is composed of a semi-circular instrument, which is used to adjust the elevation angle of the shot, so as to control the range and improve the accuracy of the shot.

3. The cost of the mortar is low because of its simple structure and light weight, so its cost must be low? Not necessarily! However, the Western Sui people invented the method of spiral coil welding to manufacture mortar barrels, which greatly reduced their manufacturing costs. Therefore, mortars can be massively mounted in the army.

4. Easy to operateWe all know that the army of the Western Sui Empire was the army with the highest quality of soldiers in the world at that time. Not only can the soldiers be literate and hyphenated, but the middle and lower-ranking officers have a high level of military literacy. That's why the Western Sui Empire has: out of the general into the phase! In this way, this is one of the reasons why the Western Sui Empire was able to become the world's number one power. However, this is only a matter of the middle and late Tianyu Dynasty of the Western Sui Empire. This was not the case in the early Hechiti army.

Artillery is a very technical type of troops, what ballistics, firing range, elevation angle, and ranging all need to be calculated through the system. But the requirements for mortars are clearly much lower.

(1) The operation of the mortar is extremely simple, and it is very similar to modern mortars. Its shells were cast from cast iron, essentially the same as modern mortars. The only difference may be that the modern mortar shell is fired by a primer firing pin, while the mortar shell of the Western Sui period is a more primitive twist ignition type.

Its shell structure is divided into two stages, the first stage is ignited by a fire twist, and then the gravity shell is used to fall, at this moment the first stage of the bottom powder pack produces a high-temperature and high-pressure gas, propelling the shell to fly. The second stage, on the other hand, relies on delayed fuse ignition to explode on the floor or in close range volleys.

(2) The measuring tool of the mortar is cast after strict calculation, and there is a scale of distance and elevation angle on it, and the impact point can be basically determined through operation.

5. The rapid firepower mortar is easy to operate and ****** integrated with the shell, so its firing speed is greatly improved. It can probably reach rounds per minute, the firing range, and the killing radius of the shell is about 5m, which shows its powerful firepower. In the early days of the Western Sui Empire, it was the main front-line support firepower of the cavalry infantry.

6. It has a wide range of application and curved ballistics, which is suitable for overtaking shooting at targets behind concealed objects (such as hills), and can also be used for direct shooting at close targets. Can be used in mountain warfare and trench warfare.

Due to the emergence of a large number of advanced weapons in the Western Sui Empire, in the later period of the Tianyu Dynasty, Western countries had to change their tactics due to the huge military pressure of the Western Sui. Trench warfare became an effective means of defense to block the advance of the Western Sui infantry and changed the mode of warfare. At this time, the mortars of the Western Sui again had an advantage on the battlefield.

Classic horse rifle cannon

Speaking of infantry artillery, we have to mention a classic artillery that opened up territory for the Western Sui Empire and made great contributions - three-inch horse rifle gun! It is by far the most armed artillery in the world. Since 1624, when the gun was finalized, there were few changes, and a total of about some more than one gun was equipped. It was not until the time of the Datong Emperor that it was replaced by the more advanced Datong ten-year 90mm infantry gun.

Around 1622, with the application of pyrite baking desulfurization and lime calcination and desulfurization technology, the iron smelting industry in the West Sui has made great progress, and the discovery of high-grade iron ore in Baiyun Obo has stimulated the iron smelting industry in the West Sui.

Under such circumstances, the Western Sui army had higher requirements for artillery, and they were no longer satisfied with mortars, but hoped to have a powerful field artillery as a deep artillery support weapon. The classic horse rifle was born in such an environment.

At the beginning, the craftsmen of the Western Sui Dynasty imitated two types of artillery using the Ming court cannon or the Franc machine rear-loading cannon as a model. They are named General Shenwei Cannon and Tiger Ben General Cannon.

Shenwei General Cannon: It weighs three tons, and the total length of the cannon is about 2.3 m (1 foot ≈ 0.33 cm in the Western Sui). The bottom of the barrel is thick, and the front end of the muzzle is equipped with an open opening! The charge is five catties, and ten catties of guns are fired. The range is about and the lethality is extremely high.

General Tiger Ben's rear-loading gun: heavy, the total length of the gun is 5 feet and about 1.65 meters. It is a completely imitation of the Portuguese Franc rear-loading gun. The firing range is about 500m, the rate of fire is fast and the lethality is small.

However, neither of these guns satisfied the military. The reason for this is that both guns have obvious flaws. Although the Shenwei General Cannon is hugely powerful, it is too bulky, the rate of fire is slow, and the firing range does not have a great advantage. The Tiger Cannon is stronger than the Kamui General Cannon in terms of weight and rate of fire, but its short range and power disappointed the military.

In the end, the military only purchased 12 guns each to train artillerymen. But the worrying thing was born again, and it was only a month after the military order was issued that all the General Tiger Ben guns were received, and the General Shenwei guns were delivered to the military half a year later. This undoubtedly annoyed the military and worried the Great Khan Burhan.

At that time, the Great Khan Burhan not only reprimanded Li Mo, the firearms supervisor, but also his immediate boss, Feng Sanhuai, the chief weapons supervisor, was reprimanded. Originally, this was already a very humiliating thing, but I didn't expect that there was an even worse thing that the military had an explosion accident during the training of using Shenwei military artillery, and more than a dozen artillery soldiers were killed or wounded. Feng Sanhuai and Li Mo were in danger of being impeached by the imperial history, and Li Tongfan, the captain of the Jianrui Battalion, who was the promoter of firearms in the army, was also implicated. However, instead of punishing a few, the Great Khan Burkhand had them have to develop a practical artillery for the army within a year to make up for their mistakes.

Together, they summed up the lessons of the failure and found that there were three reasons for the explosion of the artillery. First, the Shenwei General Cannon is a heavy artillery, which cannot be manufactured by a section-by-section forging and welding method such as the Tiger Ben General Cannon, and can only be cast as a whole. This increases the probability that the gun will develop a sand hole due to the difference in the cooling time during the casting process, resulting in a bore explosion. Second, the overall casting of Shenwei's cannon adopts the pottery mold casting method. It is not only time-consuming and labor-intensive, inefficient, but also has the lowest yield in the natural shade drying process. In addition, after natural air-drying and baking, the inner wall will be cracked and honeycomb surface caused by water loss, resulting in the internal grooves and sand holes inside the artillery, which is easy to explode. Third, the pig iron used to pour artillery is not qualified.

As for the cause of the problem, several people found a targeted solution.

First, the new guns still use the method of pouring as a whole, but the guns are divided into two main parts, which are poured separately. What are the two parts? It's the barrel and the bolt!

Barrel: It is a thick steel pipe with a thick bottom and a slender upper part, and the top is equipped with an open mouth to prevent the muzzle bursting and ricochet caused by the rapid muzzle velocity of the shell. It looks like a baseball bat.

Gun latch: Gun latch is also called gun door. As the name suggests, its role is to seal the bottom of the gun. It is specially poured with a delicate mold and belongs to the screw latch. It looks like the screws we use now, with threads on the periphery that match the inner threads at the bottom of the barrel. It's just that this screw is relatively large, and it's hollow. So what does the cavity in the middle do? It was used to reload fixed charges of gunpowder and shells.

The Western Sui people made gunpowder into granules to increase its burning time, improve the combustion efficiency of gunpowder, increase the chamber pressure, and reduce the amount of residue caused by gunpowder flash ignition and agglomeration, and reduce the frequency of artillery clearing.

The bottom side wall of the bolt had a hole that matched the bottom of the barrel. When the bolt is locked, the two holes are spatially overlapped to insert the fire twist.

This pouring method greatly increases the manufacturing speed of the gun, and also reduces the defective rate.

The whole barrel is not only conducive to pouring, but also reduces the difficulty of cooling and cleaning the gun. The unique design of the gun bolt not only reduces the difficulty of gun production, but also greatly increases the rate of fire of the gun. In actual combat, in the artillery units of the Western Sui Empire, a horse infantry gun was often equipped with eight bolts to increase the rate of fire (up to 3 rounds per minute), slow down the rate of artillery accumulation, and reduce the frequency of cooling and clearing.

Second, in terms of pouring materials, the Western Sui people used fried steel as the pouring material.

Combined with some documents of the Western Sui Empire and modern archaeological excavations, people were surprised to find that the Western Sui Empire was able to produce alloy cannon steel on a large scale at that time. Its main chemical components wc≈0.27%~0.46%w(cr)≈0.4%~1.19%w(mn)≈0.25%~0.50%w(v)≈0.15%w(ni)≈2%~3.3%w(si)≈0.17%~0.43%w(s/p)≤0.08%

It's unbelievable to see the data. Through the documents left behind by the Western Sui Empire, we can know. At that time, in the manufacturing process, the horse rifle was poured with fried steel. For frying steel, it is also introduced in the literature. “… The raw meal is melted, mineral powder is added, tumbling and stirring, smelted to two or three hours, poured into ingots, repeatedly forged, and fried steel! ”

The raw meal in the introduction is pig iron or scrap steel; Molten means that pig iron is in a liquid or semi-liquid state; We suspect that the mineral powder may be the source of the alloying elements in the cannon steel.

In 2007, during the archaeological excavation of Majiahe near the river, archaeological experts excavated the ruins of a water conservancy forging bed in the Hechiti period of the Western Sui Dynasty, and found some semi-finished products of fried steel in it.

The carbon content of its semi-finished products is about 0.60%. Originally, the steel is an indirect smelting, the initial smelting will reduce the carbon content to about 0.60%, and then poured into steel ingots, and these steel ingots will be repeatedly forged on the water conservancy forging machine without cooling, and the carbon content will be further reduced to 0.27% ~ 0.46%, and then the forged steel ingots will be melted to pour the artillery.

The use of fried steel to pour artillery greatly reduces the weight of the artillery, but improves the quality and service life of the artillery.

Third, use the iron fan casting cannon method

Based on the shortcomings of Tao Fan casting cannon, Feng Sanhuai, the master craftsman of the weapons supervisor, invented the iron fan casting cannon method.

Compared with the shortcomings of pottery fan production, such as long time to make, large size change, high defect rate, rough inner chambering, and easy to explode, the iron fan cast cannon has extremely obvious advantages. Tiefan has the advantages of reusability, shortened working hours, smooth internal and external casting surfaces, low cost, no moisture in castings, and less air holes. However, the iron fan cast cannon has a great disadvantage, that is, due to its rapid cooling and heat loss, resulting in different internal and external shrinkage ratios, resulting in cracks in the inner chamber of the gun. At that time, during the Hechiti period of the Western Sui Dynasty, there was a saying that there were three or four good people who cast ten cannons, but it was quickly resolved.

Inner tank cooling method. The inner tank cooling method is a cooling method for cast steel cannons invented by the Western Sui Empire during the use of iron fan cast cannons. The method of using a hollow gun core and using water as a coolant to adjust the cooling rate inside and outside the gun body.

The principle of the inner tank cooling method.

Generally, the natural cooling of the cast red-hot barrel when it is standing is from the outside to the inside, the reason is that the outer surface area of the barrel is larger than that of the inner tube, and the second is that the air circulation outside is faster than that of the inside, so that the natural outer layer is cooler than the inner layer, and finally forms the result of layer by layer expansion, and the strength is reduced. However, if the inner layer of the barrel can be cooled at the same time, or even cooled down before the outer layer, it can not only increase the cooling rate of the entire barrel, but also improve the performance of the barrel.

After the inner layer is cooled and fixed, when the outer layer is gradually cooled, due to the relationship between thermal expansion and cold contraction, when the outer layer of the barrel is cooled, it will clamp the inner layer and produce an inward stress to the inside.

Inner tank cooling structure. The steel hollow liner is used as the inner core of the casting gun, and the center of the inner tank is divided into two parts by the partition, which is penetrated at the bottom to form a closed U-shaped pipeline, and in the cooling stage of the casting gun, cooling water is added to the inner tank at one end, and it flows out from the other end. Control the cooling water temperature and flow rate to control the cooling rate of the inner and outer gun bodies.

Generally speaking, the temperature of the cooling water in the inner tank cooling method is generally about 70°, and the warm water of about 70° is continuously injected into the inner tank. The displaced cooling water is cooled in a copper radiator and then recirculated into the inner tank. This is done to prevent the cooling water temperature from changing too much, which will cause the cooling rate of the inner chamber to be out of balance.

The inner tank cooling method greatly improves the yield of cast guns, prolongs the use of cannon barrels, reduces the cost of iron cast guns, and provides technical support for the casting of large-caliber guns.

Technical parameters of the horse rifle

Caliber: (3 inches)

Muzzle velocity: 433m/s

Body: > times diameter: 22.5

Gun weight: > left and right wheel diameter: 1.5m

Full weight (gun body + frame): > ruler: > high and low firing boundary:

Charge: 1.4 kg of granular black powder or 2.5 kg of granular black powder (for push-fired shotguns)

Artillery shells: 5.1kg conical burst bullets, 5kg shrapnel grenades, 7.75kg solid round lead bullets, 5.5kg solid lead chain bullets, 6.4kg conical armor-piercing bullets with steel lead, 5kg conical armor-piercing bursting bullets with steel, 6.4kg armor-piercing incendiary shells with steel

Reloading: ****** rear reloading, both front and rear of the shell

The shells of the three-inch horse rifle were also the most advanced in the world at that time, and its invention provided technical support for Dai Zi's sub-mother cannon.

Most of the three-inch horse rifle shells used conical projectiles, rather than round shells as people often know. In actual combat, the Western Sui artillery rarely used lead bullets, because the lead bullets were soft, and the barrel would be hung with lead, which was not easy to clean up, and affected the shooting accuracy of the artillery, but preferred to use conical bursting bullets.

The advantages of conical bursting shells are high shooting accuracy, long range, high power, and easy loading.

The early cone-shaped bursting bombs of the Western Sui Empire were cast from pig iron with a high phosphorus content. It was found that pig iron, which has a high phosphorus content, could not be used for forging, but its cold brittleness was an ideal material for making artillery shells.

The structure of the conical burst bomb is complex and expensive, but for the Western Sui Empire, which was accustomed to assembly operations, such a cost was also within the affordable range.

The construction of a conical bursting bomb

The conical burst bomb is composed of: shell, inner tank, steel ball, explosive, delayed fuse, fire phosphorus, metal fire cap, wax seal, screw wing, sealing ring and other parts.

Shell: The shell of the conical burst bomb is cast from pig iron with a high phosphorus content, and the thickness is generally about > liner: The inner tank of the conical bursting bomb is a ceramic liner, which is used to fill explosives, and the thickness is about >Steel balls: Steel balls with a diameter of about 5mm are filled in the cavity between the inner tank and the shell to increase the lethality of the projectile. The manufacture of steel balls is stamped with steel bars with a diameter of about 5 mm.

Explosives: granular black powder + pine powder

Delay fuse: A fuse that burns slowly

Metal Fire Caps: Early metal fire caps were made of silver foil and placed at the bottom of the shell. When the high-temperature and high-pressure gas comes into contact with the metal fire cap at the bottom. The accumulated temperature of the silver fire cap ignites the fire phosphorus, which ignites the delayed fuse. Silver, although it had excellent ductility and thermal conductivity, was too expensive to build and was replaced by a cheaper brass fire cap.

Wax seal: The main ingredient is white worm wax, which is used to seal the fire cap, isolate air and heat, and prevent spontaneous combustion of fire phosphorus.

Fire phosphorus: The ignition substance that acts between the fire cap and the delay fuze and ignites the delay fuse by absorbing the accumulated temperature on the fire cap. Fire phosphorus is a mixture of red phosphorus (ignition point of about 240°) and distilled sulfur (ignition point of about 190°) as the main components.

Spiral wing: A special rotor is installed at the bottom of the conical burst bomb body, which is driven by high temperature and high pressure gas to produce spin phenomenon, improve its flight stability, increase range and improve accuracy.

Sealing ring: A notched bronze casting placed in the groove of the projectile shell. The main function is to seal between the projectile body and the barrel chamber, increase the chamber pressure, and reduce the swing caused by the caliber deviation between the shell body and the barrel chamber. In actual combat, the three sealing rings of the conical burst projectile are coated with white wax before the projectile is loaded.

The special design of the rifle of the three-inch rifle has made the conical burst shell famous. As mentioned earlier, the shape of the horse rifle is stout at the bottom and slender at the top. The stout lower part provides enough space for continuous gas to build up, while the slender barrel allows for acceleration. This design allows the conical projectile to obtain a higher muzzle velocity than the round projectile. Because the conical projectile can accept almost all the thrust, without creating almost no lateral pressure directed at the dot. And the slender barrel allows the conical projectile to gain sufficient thrust. The spin phenomenon allows the projectile to maintain a predetermined direction during flight, improving accuracy. At the same time, the projectile spin does not roll in the air, the top air resistance is minimal, and the firing range is increased.

The conical armor-piercing bullet was steel-lead-core

As the main type of ammunition in the navy of the Western Sui Empire, the conical lead-steel core armor-piercing bullet has long been invented and used in actual combat. Its main role is designed to combat the ironclad heavy cavalry and shield heavy infantry of Western countries.

Its structure is relatively simple, but the process is extremely complex.

Projectile structure: The conical leaded steel core armor-piercing projectile is a solid projectile made of three layers of primary metal. The outer cast iron bullet cap has an inner lead sleeve, and the inside of the lead sleeve is filled with high-strength alloy carbon steel. When the projectile hits the object, the outer cast iron shell is broken, and due to the difference in the density and quality of the inner and outer materials, the lead sleeve continues to move forward with the support of inertial force, and at this time, the high-strength alloy carbon steel wrapped in the lead sleeve has extremely strong armor-piercing ability. In actual combat, the Western Sui people found that the cone-shaped leaded steel core armor-piercing projectile was really overused against the heavy armored cavalry infantry, and then it was widely used on naval guns to penetrate the waterline, gun chamber and bridge of enemy warships.

The conical was pierced by steel incendiary shells

As a substitute for the Western Sui Navy, the cone-shaped armor-piercing bullet was made of lead steel core, and the cone-shaped armor-piercing incendiary bomb was more powerful and cheaper. At that time, except for the Western Sui Empire, the ships of all countries in the world used wooden hulls and iron-skinned warships. In actual combat, the Western Sui Navy found that the cone-shaped armor-piercing bullet with lead steel core was too powerful, so the steel-piercing armor-piercing incendiary bomb was born.

It has a simple structure. It is composed of three parts: shell, armor-piercing steel core, and steel-hardened ceramic inner core. When the projectile hits the hull, the shell cracks, and the armor-piercing steel core penetrates the iron skin and the wooden hull structure; The inner core of the steel ceramic penetrates into the inside of the hull, and at this time, the ceramic is broken, and the white phosphorus particles soaked in kerosene spontaneously combustifies, igniting kerosene, resulting in the fire and incineration of the hull. In addition, phosphorus pentoxide produced by the combustion of white phosphorus is toxic.

The conical was pierced by steel armor-piercing burst shells

The principle of the conical steel-piercing explosive bomb is the same as that of the steel-piercing incendiary bomb, so I will not introduce it here.

Ballista

A ballista is a weapon that uses the torsion generated by two bundles of tensioned horsehair, leather rope or animal tendons as a power to drive the crossbow arm to drive the bowstring to throw projectiles or arrows.

Balistae had been standardized in the Western Sui Empire and were installed in the troops as an important cavalry lethal weapon.

During the Western Expedition of Emperor Tianyou's army, he was equipped with a repeating ballista. This ballista is the same in principle as a traditional ballista, except that a number of mechanical components are added for quick winding, and it is equipped with an arrow magazine.

The basic structure of this ballista:

Two sets of torsion springs, bow plates, bowstrings, chain cam hook mechanisms, rails, stoppers, arrow magazines, gun carriages, crank handles

Torsion spring: The main mechanism that provides the ballista elastic force. Made with horsehair

Bow plate: auxiliary elastic force and elastic force transmission mechanism, generally iron tire bow plate and horn plate composite pressing

Bowstring: It is basically made of steel wire strings hinged

Chain cam hitch mechanism: a mechanical system that facilitates fast winding

Orbit: Install the re-entry mechanism platform and the crossbow arrow launch platform

Stop: Used to block the bowstring and release the elastic force

Arrow Case: Using gravity, the bolt is placed in the orbital chute

Gun Carriage: A wooden structure that supports the ballista

The ballista of the Western Sui Empire was composed of two staggered sets of torsion springs. During the winding process, the hand-crank makes the chain cam re-entry mechanism work. Its mechanism is similar to that of our current bicycle crank-pedal mechanism.

When the left cam hook moves to 300° to hang the string, the right cam hook is in the 120° position. When the left cam moves to 160°, the bowstring encounters a stopper, and the bowstring is pressed down and detached from the cam. When the left cam hook moves to 180°, the chain mechanism protrudes to trigger the stop mechanism, and the bowstring is released to complete a shot. At this time, the right cam hanging string moves to the highest point, which does not affect the left shot.

The West Sui ballista only needs to constantly shake the rocker arm and drive the cam mechanism to operate, which can achieve continuous shooting, and the firing rate can reach 25 rounds per minute. The firing range is up to 400 meters. Within a range of 200 meters, it can penetrate 3mm steel plates, which is very powerful. The trajectory of the arrow is almost straight, and it is still lethal even at around 500.

Sub-mother cannon

The sub-mother cannon was developed by Dai Zi, a famous firearms master of the Western Sui Empire.

Its main structure

It is composed of a whole barrel, a bolt, a sub-cannon, a base, a sight, and a high and low rod.

Full-body barrel: The full-body barrel is cast from cast steel and has an inner ear at the bottom

Bolt: Thanks to Lee Elmi's invention, the bolt of the sub-mother cannon is an inner groove screw bolt.

Sub-cannon: The sub-cannon neutron cannon is cast in bronze with a pair of protruding lugs at the bottom, which fit into the inner ears of the mother cannon. The purpose is to align the medicine holes between the sub-cannon and the mother cannon, and it is also easy to take out the sub-cannon to prevent the sub-cannon from expanding and sticking to the barrel of the mother cannon.

Base: generally made of cast iron, equipped with a re-entry mechanism

Sight: Semi-circular original ranging

High and low sticks: used to adjust the angle of gun fire

The sub-mother cannon was deployed in the navy of the Western Sui Empire, and it not only had a long range and high accuracy, but also a fast rate of fire. Up to 5-8 rounds/min.