Chapter 78

"Toot ......"

The shrill whistle echoed over the Shenyang Arsenal, the largest comprehensive arsenal in East Asia, and several entrances and exits of the arsenal were full of workers who had been off the night shift, and in the early hours of the morning, when thousands of workers began their day's work again, the lights that had been lit all night in a red brick western-style building next to the gun-making branch of the arsenal were also extinguished. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

By the window, Wu Yutian once again spread out the drawings on the table, and looked at the drawings from time to time, which was the result of hard work in the past period of time - thousands of drawings were drawn one by one.

This is the factory building of the gun factory, whether it is a weapons designer from the United States, or an engineer from Germany, or the company's own trained engineers and designers' offices are located in this building, where they guide production, draw drawings, design and improve various light weapons.

In the past, the Red House seemed to be very lively, with more than a dozen weapons designers designing all kinds of new weapons, from pistols to machine guns, and the designs of various light weapons were constantly being manufactured in the test workshop, and the reason for this excitement was very simple -- the army put forward more requirements for light weapons.

What rifles have been improved, what pistols have been improved, what machine guns have been developed, and of course, the mortars that have performed well in the war are indispensable.

And this office looks ugly, in fact, most of the offices here are. It's just the office, after all. Lie down in front of the drawing tablet. Wu Yutian frowned and checked the drawings little by little, but at the age of twenty-five, his face was sharp, and his dark eyes reminded people that he often stayed up late, and as a weapons engineer, it was normal to stay up late, after all, except for design. He also needs to guide the workers in the factory.

"Doesn't seem to be a problem!"

After checking the last drawing, Wu Yutian muttered to himself as he walked to another workbench.

Through the shutters in front of the table, you can see the factory building, where it works day and night, and the current gun factory still produces "Han-style rifles", and even although the production is transferred from the Hancheng Machinery Bureau to Shenyang, it is still called "Han-style", although its gun body receiver is inscribed with the word "Dong" of an arsenal in the three eastern provinces, but this does not prevent it from being called "Han-style".

on the left side of the workbench. Standing there is a state-of-the-art Mauser Type 93 rifle and a Russian Mosina dry rifle, which are used for research. Especially the former, but for the performance of the "Han style rifle", the army has always been very satisfied, especially its rate of fire, and even in the process of introducing rifle production equipment from Germany in the arsenal, the Mauser 93 type of work drawings and test sample drawings were obtained, and after the prototype gun was manufactured, the army still insisted on using the faster rate of fire "Han style", in its opinion this is the reason why the "Han style" is more suitable for combat. However, the arsenal did not suffer a loss - the working drawings and inspection prototypes of the Mauser Type 93 rifle were sold to the Beiyang Machinery Bureau and the Hanyang Arsenal in Kannai.

However, Wu Yutian didn't care about all this, what he cared about was the drawings he drew and the parts on the workbench in front of him, the dozens of parts of different sizes placed on the workbench were just processed by the night shift technician before he got off work, completely different from ordinary firearms, and there was a long arc-shaped magazine placed on the side.

Looking at the parts in front of him, Wu Yutian bent down and sat down in front of the workbench and got busy, on the workbench were stacked steel square bolts and other parts, the lubricating oil applied to the parts had dried and sparkled in the light of fluorescent lamps.

"When the bolt is pushed forward, the guide surface pushes the tail of the bolt to lift up to realize the bolt locking, and when the bolt retreats under the action of the gas rod, the bolt guided by the bolt guide surface falls and unlocks the ......"

After completing the assembly of the bolt, Wu Yutian combined the bolt with the bolt, and then gently slid the bolt to confirm its principle, in fact, this bolt offset locking principle was not invented by Wu Yutian, which can be traced back to the mechanical laboratory of the Tongjian Palace, when Wu Yutian, who studied in the Tongwen College, was in the laboratory as the assistant of the marshal, assisting the marshal to design and manufacture various mechanical products, and the bolt offset locking principle and the principle of air conduction are also the invention of the marshal, However, at that time, Dashuai only proposed a principle, at most only drew a sketch, and did not conduct further experiments.

After entering the arsenal, Wu Yutian did not sit idle, he began to apply the learning in the mechanical laboratory to the study of weapons, and in the past year, he has been engaged in the design of machine guns, on the basis of the sketch of that year, based on the principle of bolt offset locking and gas conduction, to design a machine gun.

Machine guns, in the last decade, especially in the American Shiram? Stevens? After using the recoil of each bullet to automatically load, fire and eject the shell of the machine gun, many gunsmiths struggled to design a machine gun that "occupies only a few feet and requires only a few soldiers to operate, but it fires the equivalent of a 50-man rifle platoon."

Although several Maxim machine guns were purchased by the Ministry of Police as early as the time of the Unified Supervision Office, even the Maxim machine guns were immature, and their structure was complex, and the operator needed tools to disassemble, inspect and clean them. And the complexity of the construction makes it extremely expensive - it costs £384 to buy a Maxim machine gun and its accessories, which is equivalent to buying hundreds of rifles.

Despite the fact that the Maxim machine gun is an immature weapon, although the arsenal has not relaxed its attention to it, at the beginning of the year it also purchased its latest improved Model 93 machine gun, and improved it to use 6.5mm rifle cartridges.

But even the Type 93 machine gun did not satisfy the military, and the reason for this was the cooling water cylinder used. The water in the cooling barrel cools the barrel while also bringing with it the consumption of fresh water, which turns into steam at a very fast rate during battle. So a question arises. Both how to replenish the cooling water. Even if you are lucky enough to fight near the river bank, it is almost impossible to complete the round-trip distance of only ten meters to fetch water in the heat of battle. Not to mention in battlefield conditions, or even in range conditions, if you don't prepare in advance, the shooters can't find enough fresh water to fill the cooling water cylinder, which is why. For the water-cooled machine gun of the Makqin, on the one hand, the military was envious of its rate of fire and hoped to be equipped with this weapon in large quantities, but on the other hand, it was greatly dissatisfied with the water-cooled machine gun it adopted.

Water-cooled systems may have very good cooling efficiency, but they are also their biggest weakness, after all, for the military, they need to fight in mountains, forests, grasslands and even deserts, and these areas may not always be able to provide enough fresh water.

"Not every place you can find enough cooling water!"

It is precisely because of this that Wu Yutian felt that although the design of the marshal back then was somewhat deficient, it was still very likely to be adopted by the military - it used an air-cooled barrel. And even more importantly, it is cheap, even the expensive "workshop gun" in front of it is still much lower than the Maxim machine gun.

Stuff the bolt into the receiver. Then patiently installed the trigger assembly into the lower receiver, Wu Yutian's movements were not flustered, and even seemed very skilled, in the past year, the process of continuous exploration and manufacturing, Wu Yutian has long been aware of the structure of this gun, whether it is the principle of bolt offset locking, or the principle of air conduction, he has a very good understanding, Dashuai just provided an idea, and it was Wu Yutian through a year of hard work, especially countless tests, that turned the idea into reality.

"Click, click......"

After combining the upper and lower receivers, looking at Wu Yutian, who had already shown the gun type, took the heavy barrel from the side, held the handle of the barrel, lifted the barrel fixing bolt in front of the receiver, and completed the installation of the barrel, and the spacer screw at the end of the barrel tightly fixed the barrel, which is the most attractive part of this gun - it is convenient to replace the barrel between shots, without any tools, without adjusting the gap, and even without fear of burning the barrel hot, quickly replacing the barrel solves the problem of barrel overheating, There is no need for heavy cooling water cylinders.

"Wow!"

It took a few minutes to complete the assembly of the machine gun, Wu Yutian took the gun and tried it, and then used his thumb to adjust the speed and slow machine that controls the single burst and the safety, and the operation of the machine gun was very smooth.

With the support of the bipod, Wu Yutian operated the machine gun according to the body of the gun, and picked up the magazine that was more than a foot long in his left hand, which was a 50-round magazine, and after several improvements, the reliability problem of the early ammunition supply had been solved.

"Click!"

When the magazine is loaded into the left side of the gun, the center of gravity of the gun is slightly offset, but it is still within the controllable range and will not affect the use of the gun, not to mention that it will be mounted on a tripod when in use.

"I hope the result will be satisfactory this time!"

Looking at the machine gun on the workbench, Wu Yutian whispered to himself, and lit a cigarette with a match, in the past year, he has built more than twenty machine guns, and every test will expose some problems, and it is in this continuous improvement that the reliability of the machine gun is getting better and better, from the rough design of the initial sample gun, which often fails after less than a dozen rounds, to the previous sample gun can continue to shoot thousands of bullets.

However, despite this, Wu Yutian was still not satisfied, but continued to improve its design, just like the machine gun in front of him was improved on the basis of the last test, and its parts, receiver and barrel were replaced with new steel, according to Wu Yutian's assumption, its service life will far exceed that of the previous test gun.

The rapid sound of gunfire echoed on the shooting range of the arsenal in the three eastern provinces, and in the deafening sound of gunfire, two machine guns were spitting a rain of bullets towards the target area, and one by one the iron targets were smashed into a sieve in the dense rain of bullets. However, there seemed to be a difference between the two machine guns, with a thick cooling water tank mounted on a gunwheel gun carriage that looked like a small cannon, while a machine gun spewed tongues of fire from a low tripod in the grass beside it.

In contrast, the rate of fire of the Maxim machine gun seems to be faster, especially the 333 rounds of ammunition belt it uses to provide it with continuous firepower, and in comparison, the machine gun on the side that uses a 50-round arc magazine to feed the ammunition, its firepower is a little "weak", but under the operation of the shooter, it continues to carry out burst fire at a frequency of 6-9 rounds, and there is a pause of one or two seconds from time to time in the middle of the seemingly continuous shooting, and the secondary shooter will quickly change the magazine on his left side to ensure the supply of ammunition. Although it seems to have a slower rate of fire than the Maxim machine gun, in fact the two are comparable.

Standing on the viewing platform more than ten meters away, Tang Haoran, who was wearing a military uniform, looked a little excited, although the test machine gun was a little different from the machine gun he was familiar with, more precisely, there was a certain gap between the Bren machine gun drawn from memory in the mechanical laboratory, especially the change of the above feed to the left side, which made it look very unfamiliar, but Tang Haoran still found the impression of the old memory.

"Dashuai, in the test a few days ago, it fired 40,000 rounds of ammunition in a row with two barrels, and Makqin only fired less than 6,000 rounds of ammunition before it malfunctioned......"

Before Shang Dequan's words fell, the small cannon-like Makqin machine gun stopped firing, and the shooter operating the machine gun immediately got busy, took out tools from the box on the gun carriage to disassemble the machine gun, and replaced the malfunctioning parts, while the machine gun on the side that seemed to be a little inconspicuous and used the magazine to feed the ammunition was still spitting tongues of fire.

The failure of the Makqin machine gun made the corners of Wu Yutian's lips rise slightly, and at the same time looked at the marshal and the commanders of the staff in the audience, today's shooting show was a one-man show to try the Type 23 machine gun, and the joy on the face of the marshal made him believe that he had succeeded.

"Zaita, how much does it cost?"

Looking at Wu Yutian, Tang Haoran didn't expect that the first person to turn his "idea" into a product would be this inconspicuous guy in the mechanical laboratory, in any case, the machine gun is exactly what the army needs, even if it is a "dual-purpose machine gun" with poor firepower continuity.

"Dashuai, the cost of the current workshop test machine gun is 286 yuan, and if it is mass-produced, it should be reduced by about half......"

Wu Yutian's answer made Tang Haoran nod with satisfaction, it is indeed very cheap, far from being comparable to Makqin, which costs as much as 1,000 yuan. So he continued to command.

"Since the test was very successful, I think we can first make a batch for the troops to test, and if the trial is satisfactory, we can consider equipping the troops on a large scale......"

The words paused slightly, looking at the machine gun spitting hot tongues, the corners of Tang Haoran's lips were slightly raised, and his face was full of pride, as if he saw thousands of enemy troops falling under the muzzle of the machine gun in a dense formation...... (To be continued.) )