At present, the main force of the Chinese army is still the old front-loading smoothbore guns, although the Chinese Empire has barely been regarded as having the most advanced breech-loading rifled guns in contemporary times, but the Linde Machine Factory has only just built a few prototype guns.

And because of the difficulty of production and the high price, even the navy has only placed an order for a dozen or so, but these dozen or so, because these breech-loading rifled guns use long cylindrical shells, and the weight of the previous shells is no longer enough to measure the power of the artillery, so the military has formulated a new standard for rear-loading rifled guns, that is, according to the length of the barrel and the caliber to formulate the standard.

The first batch of rear-loading rifled guns ordered by the Navy was called the '1857 style 180 mm gun', the caliber of the gun was 180 mm, only the weight of the gun body was about 4.3 tons, the use of specially developed conical shells, the style of the shells is actually very similar to the Mini bullet, the outer layer of the shell needs to be coated with soft lead to fit the rifling, this kind of shell weighs about 48 kilograms, and the muzzle velocity of this shell can reach about 360 meters per second.

This artillery, if measured by the weight of shells in the old style, is a hundred and five-pound cannon!

The huge weight makes it impossible for this kind of artillery to maneuver on land at all, and even if it is used on warships, it has very big limitations, the largest ship of the Imperial Navy is only a thousand tons, and the others are still small guys of several hundred tons, and they can't load such a large tonnage of artillery at all.

These 1857-style guns were all prepared for the Wusong Fortress!

At present, the main guns of the navy and army are still front-loading smoothbore guns!

But don't think that a front-loading smoothbore gun is easy to build. It is true that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Manchu Qing Dynasty were able to produce artillery in small workshops, but the performance and quality of that kind of artillery were unremarkable.

The Chinese army's requirements for the quality and performance of front-loading smoothbore guns are still relatively high. It is completely manufactured in contrast to imported foreign guns.

In terms of quality and performance, the front-loading smoothbore guns produced by Linde Machine Factory are already comparable to the products of European and American countries of the same era. However, in order to improve the quality, the Linde Machinery Factory produced imitation Napoleonic guns, this kind of cannon is cast in bronze, although durable, not easy to blow up, etc., but the weight is relatively large, the twelve-pound gun is more than 550 kilograms alone, and the weight of the whole gun, including the gun carriage and wheels, is more than 1,000 kilograms.

Although this twelve-pounder gun was already much lighter than other old front-loading guns of the same caliber, it was necessary to carry such a gun for mobile combat. At the same time, if it had to bring ammunition, dozens of servant horses would be needed to serve it.

Just a standard six-door 12-pounder artillery company needs more than 130 service horses, and due to the fact that the strength of the Chinese army's service horses, mules, etc., which is generally small, and the actual use of this number will be exceeded, it is common for a 12-pounder artillery company to have more than 150 service animals!

Although this type of bronze twelve-pounder cannon can also be produced from a handicraft workshop, it is difficult to produce whether it is a machine or a handicraft workshop, so the total output is relatively limited.

Any era. The production of artillery is not easy!

In addition to the bronze front-loading smoothbore guns, in fact, the Linde Machine Factory also had iron-cast artillery, not only iron-cast front-loading smoothbore guns, but also iron-cast front-loading rifled guns.

But cast iron artillery is cheap to build. However, the current steel technology is still too primitive, and it is impossible for the Linde Machine Factory to obtain a large amount of fine steel to cast artillery, so it can only use wrought iron. The iron cannon was always flawed in one way or another.

At the beginning of 1856, the Linde Machine Factory trial-produced more than a dozen iron-cast front-loading smoothbore guns, and the test firing was good. However, after being delivered to the army, the two guns were connected to the bombardment, and as a result, the army directly stopped continuing to order iron-cast artillery. And directly mothballed the iron-cast artillery that has already been in service!

It was not until the second half of this year, after the Jiangnan Mining Company began small-scale trial production of steel and supplied some of the better quality wrought iron to the Linde Machinery Factory, that the Linde Machinery Factory restarted the design and casting of the iron cannon, and this time provided two design proposals to the military at the same time.

One is the traditional twelve-pounder front-loading smoothbore gun!

And the other is a twelve-pound front-loading rifled gun!

Although the front-loading smoothbore gun in these two types of artillery is slightly inferior to the bronze gun in terms of durability and accuracy, it is also cheaper due to its light weight and more importantly, the price is cheaper, and the military has tested it many times and found that there is no hidden danger of exploding, so the military has placed a large number of orders!

As for the front-loading rifled gun, it was actually influenced by the Mini rifle and the rear-loading rifled gun!

Although the Linde Machinery Factory has designed and manufactured the 1857 rear-loading rifled gun, it is not possible to mass-produce it on a large scale because of the high cost of this gun and the safety hazards such as the tail bolt when it is rear-loaded.

To this end, the Linde Machine Factory changed some of the shots, such as abandoning the multi-barrel and rifling mode, and adopting the rifling mode on the Mini rifle to reduce the cost of rifling. At the same time, the rear loading is front-loaded, although the launch is not as convenient as the rear loading gun, but the victory is mature in technology, and it is also safer.

At present, a front-loading rifled gun with a caliber of 75 mm has been tested in the army, and if it passes the test, the military will begin to purchase it in small quantities.

After all, even if it is front-loaded, but this is also a rifled gun, and the price must be a lot higher than that of a smoothbore gun!

Whether it is a smoothbore gun or a rifled gun, whether it is bronze casting or wrought iron casting, but the current production capacity is relatively limited, and its main manufacturer, Linde Machinery Factory, not only supplies field guns, mortar guns, etc. for the army, but also supplies a large number of naval guns for the navy.

Whether it is rifles or artillery, a single Linde machine factory cannot meet the needs of the Chinese navy and army, and the current emergency solution is to transfer some unimportant production tasks to some small workshops in the people, such as cold weapons, and flintlock pistols with lower technical content. Even some light mortars and four-pounder infantry guns, which were simpler and lower-cast, had already begun to be ordered by the people.

At the same time, it is also actively seeking the import of ordnance. In particular, various artillery pieces and the British's 1853 Enfield rifles, however, were already prepared to launch a second opium war against China by Britain and France. It is more difficult to import ordnance.

On the contrary, they do not block the machinery and equipment for making guns, and they can sell as much as they want!

Therefore, to solve the shortage of ordnance production capacity, we mainly have to rely on the development of the domestic military industry, not to mention the continuous expansion of Linde Machinery Factory!

In order to allow the Jinling Arsenal to be completed and put into operation as soon as possible, under the leadership of the Ordnance Department, the military has placed orders for tens of thousands of rifles and hundreds of artillery pieces to this one that is still under construction, and all of them are the kind of advance payment.

This is also an old routine of the military. In order to support some defense-related enterprises, the military often orders ordnance products in advance and then pulls out advance payments, which is a disguised loan to allow them to expand and develop.

This was the case at the Linde Machinery Factory, the Shanghai Shipyard later, and the Jinling Arsenal now, and even the Linde Machinery Company, which was copying steam engines, received orders from the military for dozens of large ship-based steam engines and paid most of the advance payments for them.

And this time, after the formulation of the strategic plan for 1858, the Ministry of Ordnance went to several related defense enterprises. That is, Shanghai Shipyard, Linde Machinery Factory, Linde Machinery Company, Jinling Arsenal, etc. placed orders.

At the same time, in order to keep up with the times. This time, the Ministry of Ordnance also signed relevant research and development contracts with these companies, which means that the military designates a specific project, such as the research and development of new metal bullets. Another example is the research and development of rear-loading rifles, etc., the research and development of these new technologies and equipment is actually very risky. The cost is too high for the company to bear independently, and if it does not succeed, it is easy to lose a lot of money.

In order to reduce the burden on businesses. In fact, it is also to allow enterprises to be more active in the research and development of certain new technologies, so the military has proposed a research and development contract, as long as the enterprise conducts research and development on a number of projects designated by the military, then it will obtain a research and development contract, from which a certain amount of funds can be obtained.

Of course, it can't be all, it can only be said to be a part, and if it is developed, then the military will give priority to the procurement of ordnance products produced by this new technology.

This time, the military and various enterprises signed more than 30 research and development contracts, from artillery to rifles to artillery shells, including the research and development of metal bullets, the research and development of new collision and time-delay fuzes, and the research and development of new rear-loading rifled rifles. to the research and development of domestic steam engines for the navy, new naval guns, etc.

Even some basic research and development is also in the ranks of support, for example, the signing with Jiangnan Mining Company has a new steel research and development, the military is eager to hope that Jiangnan Mining Company or other enterprises involved in steel manufacturing can come up with a technical solution for large-scale production of steel.

This has to have iron and steel, which can form the steel industry, and the promotion of steel for the defense industry is immeasurable, with a large amount of steel, the military can even directly use steel to cast artillery, guns and other weapons, used to build steel warships and so on.

The steel industry involves the most basic disciplines, relying only on the private enterprises themselves to evolve and promote, in fact, it is difficult to make a breakthrough in a short period of time, so the military is hoping to give some support, so that the private sector is more active in carrying out these work.

In fact, the military does not only support enterprises, in fact, the military itself conducts research, and the ordnance department is not only a procurement department for guns, but also a department with a research and development nature.

There is a special technical research department under the department, which is divided into many departments and sections, such as the gun department, the artillery department, the materials department, and the machine department.

These people have nothing to do all day long to study ordnance technology and defense-related technology, which is a very typical academic institution.

In addition to the Ordnance Department, the Shipbuilding Department of the Admiralty is also a design and research and development organization.

And those projects in the R&D contract are actually proposed by them!

There are also many pre-orders for the R&D contract, which are all preparations made by the military for next year's large-scale expansion!

And once the recruits, officers, and weapons prepared in advance are in place, then the size of the Chinese army will swell rapidly, and then it will be the time for the Chinese army to launch a new round of strategic offensive! (To be continued......)