On the battlefield of 1,000 to 1,500 meters, the Jiaozhou fleet was almost pressing the pirates, and more than a dozen pirate warships rushing in the front row were tragically baptized by the artillery fire of the Jiaozhou fleet. www.biquge.info In less than a quarter of an hour's battle, three small ships were sunk by the pirate Wang Nao, and the rest of the ships, including the Black Wind, were also wounded by various sizes. The Black Wind alone was hit by more than a dozen bullets, and the fire spread on the pirate warship, and the sailors also suffered heavy casualties. After suffering such a violent blow, the pirate's morale suddenly fell to the freezing point, and he was no longer arrogant just now! The balance of victory gradually tipped to the side of the Jiaozhou fleet, and the battle seemed to have taken a shocking turn!

The reason why the Jiaozhou fleet was able to achieve such great results was mainly due to the gunpowder they used and the new flowering shells. After nearly two years of continuous improvement, the gunpowder produced by the Shihe Arsenal of the Broken Army is not the original simple black powder, but the maroon gunpowder that is infinitely close to the later generations, and Liu Fan has always emphasized the granularization of gunpowder, so the gunpowder used by the Jiaozhou fleet is obviously much higher than that of the pirates. This also means that under the same circumstances, the artillery of the Jiaozhou fleet can hit farther and be more powerful.

Judging from the current development of the world's navy, whether it is the Zheng family in the South China Sea or Western countries, in terms of the range of artillery firing alone, none of them can be comparable to the current Broken Army. The maximum range of the Frankie gun, which uses the current black powder, is only two or three miles. The effective range is even worse, and being able to hit a target at a distance of one thousand meters is a stroke of luck. Therefore, in a general naval battle, the fleets of both sides rarely choose to fire at a distance of 1,000 meters. They all choose to place the combat area between 500 meters and a thousand meters or less. In particular, the British Royal Fleet of the British Empire clearly stipulated that gunners could not fire at a distance of 1,500 feet (457 meters), and that any violation would be severely punished by military law. It can be seen that the main battlefield of the current naval war is not at all a kilometer away. Wang Zhi's pirate group was undoubtedly a world away from the powerful British navy, so their artillery could not hit the warships of the Jiaozhou fleet at a distance of a thousand.

However, the Jiaozhou fleet, which used maroon gunpowder, could calmly fire shells from a distance of 1,000 meters to hit the enemy, and from this point of view, the Jiaozhou fleet undoubtedly had a great advantage. The killer bullet of the Jiaozhou fleet has undoubtedly increased this advantage, which is far stronger than the enemy's range and powerful shells, and the sum of the two is not just one plus one equals two, and the advantage of the Jiaozhou fleet under the combination of strong forces has almost been magnified to the maximum. In particular, the flowering bombs, the huge power of the pirates to cry wolf, further highlighted the strong firepower of the Jiaozhou fleet.

In fact, the flowering bomb was not the first invention of the Shihe Arsenal, the original flowering bomb appeared as early as the end of the Southern Song Dynasty in China, and the earliest flowering bomb was an iron-shelled flowering bomb, and its improved version was used by the Yuan army to conquer Japan. Cannonball blossoms are now used mainly for siege in the 14th century. A.D. 1488-1505, the Ming Dynasty invented early explosive bombs called "poisonous fire flying cannon" and "thief god hit pomegranate" on the basis of traditional explosive firearms, which was no later than the flowering bomb that appeared in the West at the same time, and the poisonous fire cannon was also a chemical warhead, "built-in arsenic, poison, exploded after landing, and the drug and iron shell fragments killed and injured the enemy at the same time" The thief god hit the howitzer is a conventional warhead, "shaped like a pomegranate, the size of a bowl, built-in gunpowder, with a special slow-burning fire, thrown to the enemy position, shocked and exploded. “

However, due to the limited technology of the time, the power of the flowering bomb was not very large. At present, the most advanced flowering bullet of the Ming Dynasty is nothing more than a small hole in the surface of the projectile, and then filled with a small amount of gunpowder and a trace amount of iron flakes. Then plug the cork and twist as a lead to detonate. High-powered flowering shells are mainly used for mortar cannons or trebuchets that can be fired at a curve, and the ones that are really used in field artillery or siege guns are some less powerful flowering shells. However, the power of this more primitive flowering bullet is not to be underestimated, in the eastern border pass of Liaodong in the Ming Dynasty, the Ming defenders used this kind of thing to kill the old slave of the Tartars, and resisted the Tartars for nearly a hundred years.

As a traverser, Liu Fan will certainly not give up this kind of big killing weapon, since the establishment of the Shihe Arsenal, Liu Fan and Sun Yuanhua have been committed to the research of flowering bombs. Combined with the knowledge of later generations and the manufacturing process of the current Ming Dynasty, the Shihe Arsenal finally overcame the technical problems not long ago and possessed the most important wooden conical letter tube and wooden bullet butt technology for flowering bullets. Liu Fan absorbed the method of Lu Da, an arms expert of the Eighth Route Army in later generations, put the overall hollow shell shell shell cast by white iron into the iron box and sealed, and carried out spheroidization heat treatment and annealed into black-hearted ductile cast iron, which can greatly improve the strength. The use of this heat treatment method can not only enhance the strength of the projectile, but also reduce the wall thickness and add more gunpowder, so that the new type of flowering bullet is more powerful and has a wider killing range.

The application of the wooden conical letter tube solves the problems of airtightness and delayed detonation of the flowering bomb, which can better and more accurately control the detonation time of the flowering bomb and give the enemy the greatest killing effect. The existence of wooden cartridge butt also has a huge role, in addition to effectively sealing the gas leakage, the addition of soft wooden buttresse to the tail of the shell can also play a buffering role on the hollow grenade when fired, and the grenade launched will cause the "badminton principle" self-stabilizing structure of the head and tail due to the light wooden butt, making the trajectory more accurate. Under the bonus of a variety of "black technology", the new flowering projectiles used by the Jiaozhou fleet can hit farther, have a higher hit rate, and are more powerful. Correspondingly, once they are put into the battlefield, the more obvious the effect will be, and Wang Zhi and other pirates are the first touchstone of this "black technology"!

In addition to the pain and shock, the flowering bomb brought great irritation to the pirates. The boiled duck not only flew, but also pecked them fiercely, and at this moment Wang Zhi's mood was nothing but anger. Enraged, Wang Zhi roared desperately: "Fight back!" Fire! Give Lao Tzu a full sail and rush over to fight! ”

As an old pirate, Wang Zhi was very aware of their disadvantages, and he knew that in this case, only the fastest speed to close the distance between the two armies could make up for the embarrassment of their own artillery range and give full play to their strong military advantage. So he immediately issued what he thought was the most correct order!

Driving downwind, the pirate army approached the Jiaozhou fleet at great speed. Fan Liang didn't even need a telescope to clearly see the faces on the opposite battleship! The two warships are less than 500 meters apart! (To be continued.) )