Chapter 684 The Battle of the Yangtze River: A Ship is a Thousand

"Bullet ......"

"Aim for ......"

The technicians of the Foshan Manufacturing Bureau turned into gunners, and the two guns in the bow of the ship with shields rotated in the sound of the grinding of gears, and the not very thick gun holes pointed at the Qing sentry ship two or three miles away, and the target was only larger than the black spot.

Yue Shenglin stammered: "This, this is still two or three miles away!?" ”

Mi Anping winked at him: "Scare them first......", "

Yue Shenglin said I was frightened first, even if it is a twenty-pound cannon, the army's shooting table also requires that it can only be fired accurately within two miles, and this cannon is only larger than a four-pound cannon, etc., isn't it

"Fire!"

There were two cannon shots, Yue Shenglin stood on the deck at the front of the hull, behind the second gun, seeing that after the gun was fired, the gun mount shield did not move, but the gun barrel slid backwards, and then bounced back by itself, and his eyes almost popped out.

The barrel resets itself, and the technicians skillfully unscrew the tail of the gun, clean the chamber with a mop, load the shell, stuff the medicine bag, close the bolt, and insert the fuse tube, but in about ten seconds, the gun is in a state of readiness again, and the muzzle of the gun is still pointing to the position just now.

Mi Anping nodded: "That's right, this is the navy's rifled gun, a new generation of rifled guns, the artillery field has already been tried, but there is a lack of actual combat testing." ”

Sure enough, it was a two-inch and three-inch gun......

The Lei Gong was essentially a paddle steamer gunboat, with a three-inch gun in the bow and stern, and a two-inch gun in the front and rear of the upper deck.

Yue Shenglin was born in the army system and was not very familiar with naval armaments, but he had heard of this kind of artillery. It's just that this cannon is so magical, and the corner of the eye slipped two miles away, and the water column rose near the shadow of the Qing soldier's ship, and the mentality that he originally thought he would be the protagonist suddenly dissipated without a shadow.

"This new gun not only has new technology, but also uses old technology from many years ago, and some of the technicians accompanying the ship have been thinking about this project for almost ten years."

Mi Anping was very emotional, that's right, this cannon used the hydraulic brake and retreat machine that was drummed out when the flying cannon was built in the early years. At that time, the material and craftsmanship were not good, and the reliability of the things that came out was too poor, so I had to throw them aside.

Foshan Manufacturing Bureau has not given up this project, now there is a steam engine forging pipe, and then there is a pipe valve technology developed from the Britannica pumping machine, the manufacturing bureau has also increased investment in this project, and the hydraulic brake and withdrawal machine has been put into practical use on the two-inch gun and the three-inch gun.

Not only is it used in artillery rehabilitation, after Mi Anping learned some of Pascal's theories in Europa, he felt that the hydraulic retractor seemed to be a door, a door that could innovate transmission technology. At present, although Yinghua has a steam engine, the transmission technology still stays on the gears and belts, and from the brake and retirement machine, it seems that the hydraulic transmission technology can still be figured out.

Of course, the real focus of Mi'anping's trip is still on artillery, and the new generation of rifled guns not only has a hydraulic brake machine, but also has improved the shells, and the specific effect can only be tested in actual combat. As a scientist who once went to Europa and was accustomed to seeing big scenes, he was not at all wary of the battlefield.

These two shells bombarded out, and the four Qing fast sentry boats that were rushing towards did not make a mistake, but instead slammed their oars more vigorously.

"Who the hell didn't your mother set the thunder fire pot on fire and threw it into the water? Now is not the time to fry fish! ”

There were even generals shouting at their subordinates like this, they didn't expect it to be a cannonball from the strange ship in the distance, and they thought it was a thunder canister thrown by their own people.

The distance between the two sides was less than two miles, and the Lei Gong was crossing the hull and slowly rowing in an arc, as if he wanted to turn the bow of the ship and escape, which provoked the generals of the four fast sentry ships to shout loudly and ask their subordinates to work harder. …,

Tom tom ......

Two slightly different cannon sounds roared, four clouds of gunpowder smoke rose from the Lei Gong, and columns of water splashed high above the fast sentry ship, and even the dullest of the mind should understand what the situation was.

"Get out! Whoever loses it, it out! If you let the old man find out, it will be your head that will be thrown down! ”

But the generals jumped to their feet and scolded, and the other party fired cannons, which was a show of prestige, and it had nothing to do with the water column here. This is two miles away, and the column of water is almost close to the hull of the ship, how can there be such an accurate cannon in the world?

Therefore, they can only attribute this inexplicable scenario to something more absurd, which is seen in their own people anyway.

"This is the calm Dongting Lake, where is the head?"

On the Lei Gong, Mi Anping reprimanded his subordinates dissatisfiedly, and his technicians had fired countless shells, all of which were top gunners, but none of the two rounds of shelling hit.

On the other hand, Yue Shenglin muttered weakly: "Can you hit it so far?" ”

When the distance between the two sides was shortened to nearly a mile, the third round of artillery bombardment roared, and a fast sentry ship that rushed to the front shook and suddenly splattered large pieces of broken wood, pulling out a wave from front to back, and the soldiers on board were shocked and exclaimed, and several of them were even shocked and fell into the water.

How is peeling a melon or loofah? The situation of the fast sentry ship was similar to that, a shell from a three-inch gun hit the bow of the ship, piercing through the fragile watertight hatches from front to back, and tearing the deck apart at the same time.

From the outside, the ship did not appear to have suffered fatal damage, but then the hull of the ship froze, and not only did it slow down, but the bow gradually pressed downward. The cannon had already smashed the bow of the ship and smashed several layers of watertight partitions, and it was only a matter of time before the whole ship sank.

The other three fast sentry boats woke up like a dream, rocking, and all the oars stopped at that time, and one or two hundred people looked at the fast sentry boat stupidly, but the soldiers on the victim ship did not react.

They didn't know what was going on, and the water battles they were familiar with were gunfire at a distance of up to thirty or fifty feet, and even if they were cannons, the effect of round bullets was to smash the ship's planks, how could there be a situation like this that penetrated almost the entire ship?

A Qing soldier screamed bitterly, "Monster! There are monsters! ”

The pious Qing soldiers had something else to say: "The dragon king of the lake is angry!" ”

On the Lei Gong account, Mi Anping was angry, "What's going on?" Still didn't blow up!? ”

He waved his hand angrily and said, "Keep banging!" ”

The sound of the cannon again, like ice water, finally woke up the officers and men on the three fast sentry ships. Then another boat shuddered like a shudder, and a puff of smoke and dust spewed out diagonally on the left and right sides, and then the hull pressed down and upward. The cracking sound of the kratle caused the officers and men on the ship to stagger, and the keel was broken......

A boat is piercing the fierce son, a boat is folded back and forth, the back half of the hull is still carried by the sail, pressing the front half of the hull hard, and the other two fortunate Yun'er are not slow to react and turn the rudder back to sail.

Seeing that more than half a mile away, two enemy ships were fighting horizontally, of course, the gunners on the Lei Gong would not let go of such a good opportunity, in one minute, Dong Dong fired four rounds of artillery bombardment, and saw the water column in front of him mixed with broken wood constantly spraying away, and occasionally wrapped in some human bodies waving their arms and kicking their legs.

"The shells are all rice buckets! Fish should be fed! ”

Yue Shenglin was already dumbfounded, he couldn't understand Mi Anping's roar at all.

The brake and the gun barrel need to be cooled and the shelling is temporarily interrupted, and in the distance, the third fast sentinel ship has fallen its mast and is making a circle in place, but the other parts are not badly damaged, and the guns just now only hit the upper deck and have little effect on the hull. The fourth boat seemed to be unscathed, and the oars on both sides of the hull turned faster than the paddle wheel of the Lei Gong, turning over the white waves, and fleeing for their lives like flying. …,

It seems that there is still a problem with the power of the shells, and the first two ships were too lucky, and both hit the hull below deck......",

Yue Shenglin summed it up like this.

"What's wrong!? Rush! Rush on! Pack up the boat first! ”

The vanguard fleet and Delin's boat were four or five miles away, and seeing his four sentinels being bombarded a mile away, Delin felt as if a miracle was being staged in broad daylight, and he couldn't understand why.

But after all, the other party is just a boat with no sails, no daze, and black smoke, and it is estimated that it can burn itself down at any time.

There are about 20 boats on my side, so I just rushed up and beat them up. As for the incredible sight just now, Delin even had a relationship with many officers and soldiers of the sailor division who were already fluttering in the water in front of him, could it be that the dragon king in the lake was turning over?

More than twenty warships were in a half-moon formation, and they swooped down, Yue Shenglin took a deep breath, and felt that it was time for him to go into battle. As soon as he said hello, a hundred or so red-clothed soldiers were in position on the side of the ship, ready for a possible close-range confrontation, or even hand-to-hand combat.

Mi Anping said: "You guys lie down first, the Tartar boat is not so easy to come up." ”

Sure enough, two or three miles away, the artillery of the Lei Gong continued to exert its might, and the Qing warships seemed to be beaten all the way by fists, constantly spewing out debris and rotten wood, and trudged forward with difficulty, some were smashed to the ship's board, some were broken masts, and some were human beings flying sideways, and they were so frightened that they lowered their sails and turned their rudders.

When the Qing warships approached the range of one mile of the Lei Gong, a circle of broken ships had already been dropped outside, and with the fear of the enemy, seven or eight ships stopped.

Mi Anping's roar continued to echo on the Lei Gong, and he was still scolding the cannonball team, which made Yue Shenglin very dazed, but Yue Shenglin believed that if the people of the cannonball team were on the boat, with Mi Anping's anger, it was estimated that they would all kick them into the lake to feed the fish.

"That's the general boat!"

Then he found a strange target, Yue Chaolong was very familiar with the Qing soldier system, and Yue Shenglin was also familiar with the banner of the Qing army. He saw Delin's boat a mile and a half away, hiding behind the charging ship at the front.

"Boom! Don't think you can't hit it if you hide behind! ”

Originally, Yue Shenglin was the nominal captain, but Mi Anping seized power, and Yue Shenglin had no objection to this, he felt like a child who had not graduated from school, and there was no way to get involved in the battle of the Lei Gong.

Lei Gong whistled, boiler workers sweated and shoveled coal into the boiler, the paddle wheel rattled and turned, stirring up two circles of white water, the first mate Xu Gui turned the bow of the boat, cut out a diagonal line, swept past a Qing warship in the middle of the hull that was gurgling into the water, and maneuvered in the direction of Delin's boat.

The crackling of small cannons sounded, and the Qing warships finally had a chance to protest angrily and weakly, and the side of the Lei Gong, the iron cover covering the paddle wheel, and the shield of the artillery were like hail, but the result was only the muffled sound of gold and iron in the soldiers' battles.

The side of the Lei Gong is also covered with iron sheets, of course, not armor, but only for fire prevention, but the shotguns and even round shells of the Qing soldiers' small cannons are still powerless against this layer of báobáo iron sheets.

The Lei Gong approached Delin's boat from the side, but Delin had no sense of crisis, and this was an absolute safe distance in the tradition of the Qing Army's inland water division.

It wasn't until the hull shook violently that Delin came to his senses, and he watched the front side of the ship, an invisible force rushing in, almost tearing the front half of the hull, and at that moment, he completely understood.

This is a ghost ship that knows how to use demons, and it carries a ghost cannon that can cast witchcraft! …,

That's how Delin knows, his face is sweaty, and he is about to give the order to turn the rudder, how can people win the fight?

With a muffled thud, the boat was hit again, and the cannonball slammed diagonally into the side of the ship, savagely tearing open the plank, knocking away all the human and debris that stood in its way, and opened a terrible gap in the deck, until it came to a halt at the feet of Delin.

The boat tossed violently, and everyone fell into a ball, and when Delin got up from the deck, a puff of green smoke rose from his feet, and on closer inspection, it was the smoke of a cylindrical iron fellow.

Dozens of frightened subordinates around him stared at Delin, he forced himself to compose, kicked in front of the uneven cannonball, and scolded: "I should have known that everyone should have prepared the black dog blood" ,......"

A soft sound popped out, Delin frowned, and when he heard that it was the front end of the cannonball, he subconsciously looked down.

Boom ......",

A cloud of orange flames exploded, nearly cutting off the boat. Dozens of officers and men on the deck were either engulfed in flames or thrown into the sky by the shock wave, and the flying shrapnel smeared the flames with a thin and báo blood-red mist.

Delin felt as light as a swallow, no, he was simply light, and he was merging into a blazing fire. In mid-air, I saw a head with a half-cut chest, and a flowery winter hat, rolling higher and higher, pulling out a long parabola, falling far into the lake, splashing a wave that was completely negligible at this time.

On the Lei Gong number, everyone cheered, and Mi Anping also let out a long breath, "There is finally an explosion......

The improvement of the new generation of rifled guns is not only the hydraulic brake machine, but also the focus of innovation. The previous experience of the navy has been very clear, that is, the penetration of artillery shells is more than enough, and the destructive power is insufficient, if the stable performance of the flowering shell can be used on the rifled gun, it is the perfect gun that the navy hopes to get.

The Foshan Manufacturing Bureau has made great efforts to improve, after all, rifled guns are the new products they will focus on promoting in the future.

The shells of the two-inch guns were too small to be able to tinker with flower shells on them. So only the damage improvement was made, the warhead changed from a pointed tip to an oval, and it was hollow, so that when the shell hit the target, the warhead would be concave and flattened, and the mere penetration effect became an irregular tearing effect.

After testing, the destructive power of this kind of shell surpasses that of solid round bullets of the same caliber, after all, it is a rapid rotation, and the tearing force of irregular movement is very amazing, and after penetrating the ship's plank, it will roll forward in the hull, thus causing certain damage inside, instead of penetrating directly in the past. It is similar to the principle that a cross engraved on the warhead can cause more damage in the human body.

The work of carrying the flowering shell to the three-inch gun is the key direction, and the time fuse of the smoothbore gun is very inapplicable to the navy, and the tail of the shell of the rifled gun must be closed and shielded, and the fuse can only be placed on the tail of the bullet, which is safe and problematic.

It just so happened that the alchemists of Luofu Mountain had made phased progress in primer technology.

The French alchemist Lu Shengdi made a primer with yellow phosphorus and sulfur, and a wooden strip wrapped in sulfur was rubbed on a piece of paper coated with yellow phosphorus to make a fire, and then ignite the fire medicine.

There is still a big gap between this and the later thundermercury primer, especially in the ignition rate and stability, so the Luofu Mountain Institute of Chemistry did not take it as a formal primer technology for in-depth research, but developed a civilian match technology.

After all, it can be regarded as a kind of primer, and the Foshan Manufacturing Bureau will study this technology as the impact fuse of the flowering bomb, and the preliminary test product will be used on the flowering shell of the three-inch gun, and the shooting range test can also have a 70% firing rate, which seems to be acceptable.

..., unfortunately, it was discovered in a real battle that this thing was too unreliable, and the three-inch cannon fired more than ten flowering shells, only one exploded. Mi Anping didn't know that even this shot was kicked out by Delin himself.

However, this seemed to indicate a good start, after the bombardment of the general army boat almost no longer lived, the three-inch cannon burst three more rounds in succession, blowing up the three large reels that had been rushing very close, and the officers and men on the boat cried wolf howls, shouting demon magic or dragon kings or something, and jumped into the lake to escape.

After a short time, the Qing warships, which were originally scattered in a half-moon formation, flew around in the black smoke like headless flies, and the murderer who spit black smoke and continued to blur the vision of the battlefield was alone, choosing his favorite target and persevering in chasing the killer.

Fast whistle and other small boats run fast, Lei Gong can't catch up, but those big sand boats, catch up with the boat, but much slower than Lei Gong, Mi Anping to continue the "test", Yue Shenglin was carried away by the victory, the first mate Xu Gui is even more unassertive, what Mi Anping said is what, this boat, just like this in the north of Dongting Lake, like a horse, like a thousand, the forward fleet that killed the Qing soldiers called the end of the world, impermanence to ask for life. The surface of the lake within a radius of dozens of miles is littered with broken boats, broken wood, corpses and stumps, as well as soldiers who have fallen into the water who are working hard to dig through the water.

It wasn't until the shadow of a boat in the east almost obscured the entire lake that the red tide of excitement receded from the faces of everyone on the Lei Gong.

It's very good......

On the other side are one or two hundred Qing warships!

Mi Anping and Yue Shenglin glanced at each other, nodded at the same time in tacit understanding, and then said in unison: "Run!" ”

No matter how powerful Lei Gong is, he can defeat twenty Qing warships, but he can't defeat two hundred Qing warships, and the two of them still have this basic common sense in their hearts.

Xu Gui still didn't express any opinions, turned the rudder and left, but before the circle was finished, there was a cracking sound, and the speed of the boat suddenly dropped.

The exclamation of the crew made everyone's hearts fall into the abyss, "Oh no! The paddle was broken by debris in the water! ”。 ）