The refit of the two ironclad ships gave the Old Port Shipyard an experience of disassembling and reassembling large hulls, and in the face of this rare experience, the Old Port side and the Mawei side sent the strongest lineup to participate.

As the artillery factory of the old port, Alem and Padino, who had been secretly competing with Krupp, successfully perfected the hydraulic device of the twin 260mm guns, and also prepared to test them on the captured Dutch ironclad ships, and gave a strong reward to Padino and Alem for their dedication to Lin Haijiang.

If the hydraulic retraction buffers of the Alem and Padino are effective, then the twin 260mm guns will be able to fire at the same time, which will undoubtedly help a lot in the rate of fire and the rate of hit.

If these two ironclad ships can be renovated within six months, then they will be able to catch up with the operation to occupy Qiongya, and two more ironclad ships will be equivalent to an additional guarantee, but Lin Haijiang has made great adjustments to the installation mode of the Dutch's split naval guns.

These adjustments meant that the bridge part of the hull needed to be redesigned, and the original low bridge could no longer meet the needs of overlapping double row high and low main guns, so the redesign and installation of the high bridge became the top priority of this refit, but it was already a big challenge for the old port shipyard that already had experience in installing the main guns of the battleship.

For the large-scale shipbuilding of Britain and France in Europe, Lin Haijiang is also pursuing larger-caliber naval guns and larger-tonnage ships, but the overall research and development speed of the steam engine does not seem to be able to catch up with the tonnage of ships.

What surprised Lin Haijiang the most was Dai Wenbin, who had said that he wanted to study the repeating firecracker, and Lin Haijiang gave him some suggestions before, such as using the recoil of the impact gas generated by the bullet launch to complete the second loading, in order to achieve the purpose of bursting shots, and the design concept of grasping shell hooks.

Lin Haijiang has always focused all his energy on the construction of the navy, and the construction of the Marine Corps is based on the principle of cooperation, but China is a continental country, although it has a long coastline, but in order to occupy the interior, it is necessary to use a certain number of land forces, and it is difficult to achieve this goal by relying on the Marine Corps alone.

For the first time at this moment, Lin Haijiang had an urgent need for army weapons, that is, machine guns!

In 1851, Belgian engineers designed the world's first machine gun, which was used in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and 1871, but the effect was very mediocre and there were frequent failures, so it quickly disappeared from people's sight.

The American Gatling gun was the first large-scale machine gun used in actual combat, and in the early 60s of the 19th century, the Gatling gun was invented and improved accordingly. After 1865, the Gatling gun was changed from 4 barrels to 6 barrels, and in 1867~1868 it was increased to 10 barrels.

In 1866 began to equip the US Army and Border Guards. In 1870, after a comparative test of the British political axe, a factory was built in England to produce Gatling guns. At the same time, the Russian political axe also purchased a Gatling machine gun, renamed the Golov machine gun. According to historical sources, there were 8 companies of Russian troops in the Russian-Turkish war with 50 Gatling guns per company. In the Zulu War of 1879, the British [***] team took the initiative on the battlefield with the help of Gatling guns. Another British naval unit began to install Gatling guns on its ships.

However, the Gatling gun was too cumbersome in Lin Haijiang's opinion, and the shooter needed to have rich shooting experience, otherwise the speed of the crank was too fast and it would easily cause jamming.

Gatlin was originally a doctor, but he devoted his life to engineering. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, Gatling saw in the hospital that there were so many dead and wounded officers and soldiers evacuated, and in addition to the dead and wounded on the battlefield, many soldiers also died of disease and malnutrition. Gatling believed that if he could reduce the number of soldiers, thousands of lives could be saved. Gatling hoped to invent a gun, relying on ferocious firepower, a gun can top many rifles, so that a soldier has the combat effectiveness of many soldiers, his goal is to increase a soldier on top of a company, so as to reduce the number of soldiers on the battlefield, in order to achieve the purpose of reducing war casualties. Later he finally invented this machine gun.

A doctor invented a weapon that could kill faster and more in order to reduce casualties? It's a bit contrary to his original intention.

In the 60s of the 19th century, manual machine guns began to appear, using manual to provide power for loading, firing, and unloading, which was represented as a Gatling gun. In the 80s of the 19th century, the American Silam? Makqin's invention of the fully automatic machine gun both have their own defects, Lin Haijiang's marine corps is limited by the scale, so it must be equipped with a large number of automatic weapons to make up for the lack of personnel, and the heavy and relatively sophisticated automatic weapons have new requirements for transportation conditions, and the domestic road is also where Lin Haijiang has been very entangled.

As a simple tactical weapon, the machine gun is to meet the stable needs of continuous shooting, usually equipped with a bipod and can be mounted on a tripod or fixed gun mount, mainly firing rifles or larger caliber bullets, can shoot quickly and continuously, with strafing as the main attack mode, through the dense fire net to suppress the opponent's fire point or cover their own attack.

The earliest machine guns were bulky and suitable for positional and defensive operations, and were inconvenient to use in mobile operations and offensives. Lin Haijiang urgently needed a light machine gun that could closely follow the infantry to carry out fire support on the march, but he also clearly understood that the meal had to be eaten bite by bite, and the road had to be walked step by step, and it was easy to fall on his head if the steps were too big.

Lin Haijiang was a little hesitant in the end on the issue of whether to make a relatively simple Gatling machine gun or directly invest manpower and material resources to develop a short-barrel rear-seat self-closing sealing loading machine gun with cross-era significance.

In his memory, the inventor of the Maxim machine gun was inspired by the discovery that soldiers often had bruises on the shoulders due to the recoil of old rifles. Thinking of using the recoil energy of a gun, which comes from the gunpowder gases produced when the bullet is fired, Maxim thought it could be used. When Maxim first carried out a modification test on an old Winchester rifle, the gunpowder gas emitted by the bullet during shooting made the gun complete a series of actions such as unlocking, unshelling, feeding, and re-locking, so as to realize the automatic continuous shooting of the bullet and reduce the recoil of the gun. Historically, Maxim was the first to successfully develop the world's first automatic rifle in 1883. Later, based on the experience gained on this rifle, he further developed and perfected the principle of automatic fire with a short barrel recoil.

However, the same theory Lin Haijiang has been provided to Dai Wenbin, but having a theory does not mean that you can make a machine gun in the real sense, in history Makqin has gone to various countries to promote his invention, in April 1887 went to Russia to perform machine guns, not only did not receive any orders, but was ridiculed, at that time a very influential Russian weapons expert believed: a bullet is enough to kill and injure a person, when he is killed, there is no need to continue to fire bullets, and the barrel can be cooled, Water, however, could not be carried with you to negate the utility of the machine gun. The Americans also believed that a group of well-trained sharpshooters was more effective than indiscriminate machine-gun fire, and that Maxim's invention was a great waste of ammunition.

The Maxim machine gun first came to prominence in 1904 during the Russo-Japanese War, as a model of automatic weapons. The Russian [***] team used it to teach the Japanese army a hard lesson who was addicted to the tactics of "meat bullets". In this battle of besieging the Russian fortress, the Russian army greeted wave after wave of shouting Japanese troops with Makqin heavy machine guns, and the battle turned into a massacre. At the end of the day's fighting, the casualties paid by the army had already exceeded 4,000, so much so that when the casualty figures were reported, the staff officers of the general staff headquarters of the army actually thought that the staff officers of the divisions and regiments had written an extra zero. The heavy casualties finally made Chinese officials realize the value of the Maxim machine gun.

Lin Haijiang also knew very well that once the machine gun appeared, it would soon be no secret, just like Krupp's breech 260 mm twin cannon, and now the British Armstrong shipyard supporting the artillery production plant is said to be testing breech guns of the same caliber or even larger caliber, and the war has given birth to the upgrading of weapons and equipment.

Lin Haijiang now has a large number of six-pounder and twelve-pounder field guns that imitate the Austrian Charleiman front-loading rifled rifles, and these field guns using bronze gun mounts are also branded with the Austrian trademark, and Miller has begun to transport these arms reserves to the southern states of the United States in planned batches through returning cargo ships for storage.

In Lin Haijiang's plan, the civil war in the United States, which has lasted for nearly five years, is undoubtedly a huge arms market, and he must prepare in advance to seize market share.

That's why I was holding back my mind to preemptively study a weapon that was more effective than the Gatling gun, and then sell it to the southern states of the United States at a high price, so as to make due contributions to the family planning work of the American people.

In Lin Haijiang's memory, the cause of this war was the eleven southern states of the United States, Abraham? Lincoln withdrew from the Union in 1861 on the grounds of his inauguration, and was established under the name of Jefferson? Davis acted as the political axe of the "president" and expelled the Union troops stationed in the South, while Lincoln ordered the attack on the "rebel" states. This war not only changed the political and economic situation in the United States at that time, leading to the eventual abolition of slavery in the American South, but also had a huge impact on civil society in the United States in the future.

Due to the contradiction between the plantation economy of the South and the capitalist economy of the North, most of the black slaves were sent to the South of the United States and required to read.

Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, was one of three fortresses that remained under Union control within the Confederate limits, and Lincoln insisted on holding it. In the Confederate President Jefferson? Under Davis' orders, P.G.T. Beauregard's troops of the Confederate political axe shelled the fort on 12 April, forcing it to surrender. The North responded to Lincoln's call to the states to send troops to retake the forts and protect the Union.

Confederate President Jefferson? Davis naturally became the target of Lin Haijiang's attention, but at this time, Confederate President Jefferson ? Davis is just an ordinary member of the Senate, and the news of the conquest and punishment fleet brought back by the communication ship on this side made Lin Haijiang a little worried, he had thought about some things too easily, and the fall of the shogunate could be said to be the general trend of history.

If you want to go against the general trend, you must pay a greater price, for this Lin Haijiang has a certain degree of ideological preparation, but now it seems that his own preparations are not sufficient, said that Bensatsuma and Changzhou have a strong British and American background behind the two feudatories, and their actions have been approved and strongly supported by Britain and the United States in a large sense.

Since 1853, when the United States coerced the country to open the country with gunboats, the powerful clan of the country has realized the fact that it will be beaten if it is backward, and when it was confined to a corner of Northeast Asia under the policy of closing the country, the world is changing rapidly, and Britain, France, Russia, the United States and other countries have become a new wave of powers that dominate the world.

The Satsuma and Choshu feudatories privately reached an armed agreement with the United States, and the United States began to provide a large number of its weapons and instructors, and through the import of American goods, although the lives of a large number of small and medium-sized craftsmen became more difficult and impoverished, the strength of the Satsuma and Choshu feudatories increased exponentially, which made them dare to openly break with the shogunate.

In fact, for more than 200 years, the Tokugawa shogunate had never allowed the emperor to participate in politics, but this time, in order to reduce the opposition of the feudal domains, they wanted to conclude a treaty in the name of the emperor, and made an exception to invite the major names, feudal lords, scholars, and even commoners to give their opinions on the founding of the country. As a result, the emperor and his courtiers, daimyo and his retainers raised the banner of national salvation and took the opportunity to leap onto the political stage. In any case, the political situation in Samoto after the Black Ship Incident became more and more chaotic day by day, and it also laid the fuse for the demise of the shogunate.

Britain and the United States have invested more than Lin Haijiang expected, if they directly intervene by force, it is likely to cause British and American armed intervention and [***], as a prepared reader, Lin Haijiang can have no friends, but his political framework cannot be isolated internationally, if the political framework has no friends, it will be a disaster.

Therefore, the plan for the armed attack on the book formulated before seems to be too simple, and Miller sent back the information from Europe, European countries are building and studying ironclad ships on a large scale, especially Britain and France, which have suffered a big loss in this regard, and the number of ships they have started is in batches of ten, which shows that history has been greatly affected by the butterfly effect.

In the face of the gradual disappearance of his own advantages, Lin Haijiang can only bury his head in accelerating the development and construction of the old port, but Sumatra is only an island in any case, and does not have a huge inland resource system.

The break with the Qing court and the relationship with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom were not in a hurry, and it was best to complete his strategy of encircling the mainland with chain islands, and the strength of Prussia in Europe had already played the opposite role in stabilizing the situation in Europe, and a person's ambition grew with the growth of power in his hands, and the ambition of a country also grew with the force of the country.

If the First World War had broken out earlier, Lin Haijiang believed that that that time would have been of great help to his development and domestic expansion, otherwise his conquest of the Qing court would have been likely to be interfered with by the European powers, knowing that the Qing court had many unequal treaties that he could not have recognized obligations at all.

Just like this issue, it is not possible to directly access the operations of the Satsuma and Choshu feudal domains against the Satsuma and Choshu feudal domains, and even cannot use ships to directly blockade the Satsuma and Choshu feudal domains, for which Lin Haijiang is most looking forward to the civil war in the United States at this moment, and the United States will not be able to look outside at that time, and after the end of the American Civil War, the dust will also settle on the side of the Honben, and before that, Lin Haijiang can only spare no effort to help the dying Tokugawa Shogunate, which is undoubtedly very painful for Lin Haijiang, who has always loved to take advantage.

According to the reaction of the Marine Corps, Dai Wenbin added a prototype folding bayonet he designed to the front of the German-style rifle, and Lin Haijiang felt a little headache for this prototype bayonet, which was very close to the three-edged bayonet of later generations, because Dai Wenbin told him that the main reason why the bayonet was installed under the muzzle of the rifle was that he was worried that the careless soldier would lose it.

The first folding bayonet was mounted on the Dutch 1826 model 30 musket and was bolted to the side of the gun. Since then, there have been sporadic examples, but they have never become mainstream.

In modern times, the more famous Chinese 561 submachine gun has a stacked spike under the barrel, which is imitated from the Russian-style SKS folding spike. In Vietnam War documentaries and films, North Vietnamese military envoys are often stabbed with this type. However, the economic considerations may outweigh the dialectic of tactical thinking.

The reason why folding bayonets could not become mainstream was because of the timing of the use of bayonets by soldiers, and the strange ways in which they were used in battle formations.

Lin Haijiang was born in the navy, but he maintained a special affection for the bayonet, a cold weapon, due to the problem of metallurgical technology, the prototype bayonet made by Dai Wenbin was still relatively rough, and it was far from the saber-type bayonet in Lin Haijiang's mind.

So Lin Haijiang could spare an afternoon to have an in-depth exchange with Dai Wenbin, the way of making cars behind closed doors was obviously backward, and Dai Wenbin wanted to focus on the development and transformation of his machine gun, and not be distracted to care about bayonets.

After Lin Haijiang's inspiration and step-by-step inducement, Dai Wenbin began to concentrate on the transformation of the Gatling gun, and soon he discovered his misunderstanding, but Dai Wenbin's research speed was too slow to make Lin Haijiang realize one thing, that is, he can never pin his hopes on only one person, he needs to form a completed research team, so that the research work also becomes a cooperation model.

(To be continued)