From July to October of the fifth year of the calendar, Liu Wendong hardly rested. In addition to eating and sleeping every day, this guy basically spends the rest of his time on the research and development of new gunpowder. His "workaholic" behavior also affected members of other departments of the Ministry of Science and Technology, and during that time, it is not an exaggeration to describe the situation in the southern district of "Cool Garden" as "in full swing".

During the three-month period, Liu Wendong and other travelers from the Ministry of Science and Technology were not at their work sites in the Southern District for only two days. One day was on the Mid-Autumn Festival on August 15, and they and other travelers gathered in the "Qing Garden" for a reunion festival.

The other day was on August 21, the 100th day of Wang Kunjun's children, and he invited all the travelers and local friends to a banquet to celebrate, in order to make up for the full moon wine that had been canceled because Han Qingwen's body had not recovered. Wang Kunjun also announced the names of a pair of children at the banquet, the boy is called Wang Huan, and the girl is called Wang Qi.

Although these two gatherings were lively, they didn't come for a long time, but they ended in one or two days, and secondly, Liu Wendong and their minds were not on the party, so they didn't feel anything about these two gatherings, and they rushed back to the "cool garden" as soon as the party was over and continued to work.

If you carefully observe the content of Liu Wendong's work in these three crazy work months, it can basically be divided into three stages, the first stage is July, and it took him more than half a month to produce nitric acid. In the second stage, from the beginning of August to the end of September, he used nitric acid, sulfuric acid and cotton and other raw materials to produce nitrocellulose in nearly a month. In the third stage, from the end of September to the end of October, he used raw materials such as mercury and nitric acid to produce thundermercury.

In this way, after three months of hard work, Liu Wendong finally obtained the initiating charge and propellant required for the new firearm through experiments, which provided a source of power for the team's new rifle. It's just that the work of these three months is too hard, especially since returning to the "Liangyuan" after participating in Wang Kunjun's 100-day wine from the "Qingyuan" on the 22nd day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, Liu Wendong almost lived and ate in the laboratory of the chemical engineering department until the end of October.

In addition, these chemical experiments will produce some substances and gases that are harmful to the human body, so on the 28th day of October of the lunar calendar, when Liu Wendong came out of the laboratory with a bucket of nitrocellulose and a bottle of thundermercury in his hand, he couldn't even walk steadily. The guards who were responsible for guarding the gate hurriedly stepped forward to help him, and under his instructions, helped him all the way to the heavily guarded gunpowder warehouse of the Chemical Engineering Department, so that he could store the results of the experiment that he had obtained so hard.

After storing the nitrocellulose and thundermercury, Liu Wendong did not take a break, first found Li Junwu, who was directing the production of artillery in the production workshop of the weapons department, and reported his experimental results to him, and then went to the communication room in the north area of the "Liangyuan" with Li Junwu, and reported the news to the "Qingyuan", "Jingyuan" and Feilongzhai through the radio.

After hearing this, everyone congratulated and thanked Liu Wendong on the radio, and Liu Wendong, after a few modest words, proposed to the committee that the application should be started immediately, so that the experimental results can be transformed into production capacity as soon as possible. Although the four members of the committee all expressed their support for this, there were still many problems in the specific operation of Shiyan, the most important of which were those proposed by the brothers of the Ministry of Science and Technology at the enlarged meeting of the committee after the success of the Shiyan in the last front-loading artillery.

Although four months have passed since the last meeting, and the brothers of the Ministry of Science and Technology have done their best to tackle key problems, no breakthrough has been made in the processing and manufacturing of bullets or the design of artillery shell fuses. In a sense, last week's Lei Lei's estimate of the difficulty of bullet production was even a little low. Now it seems unlikely that even the most optimistic estimates will solve the problem of the production of bullets by the end of the year.

However, as the saying goes, "there are conditions to be on; If there are no conditions, we must also create conditions". Therefore, after some consideration, Liu Wendong put forward his own suggestions to the committee, he said: "Brothers, brothers have a way to solve the problem of equipment research and development time difference, but I don't know if it is feasible or not? ”

"Lao Jiu, if you have any ideas, just say it, you can refer to it together," Wang Kunjun said on the other end of the radio. ,

"Brother thinks so," Liu Wendong explained, "although we don't have the necessary equipment to produce bullets now, we can use the newly developed initiating charge and propellant in another way, instead of waiting for the bullets we make ourselves." ”

"Lao Jiu, do you mean to use a substitute?" Li Junwu asked beside him.

"That's right," Liu Wendong replied, "Before, everyone was entangled in the lack of processing capacity and could not produce bullets for Shiyan, but they forgot that in fact, we still have a lot of ready-made bullets available." ”

When Liu Wendong said this, the others had basically reacted and understood what he meant. There was even the sound of Xu Shaoan patting his thigh on the radio, and he regretted it: "Oh, why didn't I think of this method." Unfortunately, I had asked everyone to pay attention to the collection of used bullets and cartridge casings, but in the end I forgot about them. It's all because this period of time has been so peaceful, and I haven't encountered anything that requires the use of modern weapons, so that I can't remember these things when I can use them. ”

It is not only Xu Shaoan who regrets, but also Qian Yuanshan, Zeng Zhilin and others. In their opinion, if they hadn't forgotten about it, then at the meeting after the artillery shiyan, they would at least have one reason to add points to their side, and they wouldn't even be able to raise their heads when they were taught a lesson by their eldest brother.

With Liu Wendong's suggestion, there is a basis for Shiyan work on initiating and propellant charges. After discussion by the Committee, it was decided that the shiyan would be divided into two parts.

The first is to use the two gunpowders that Liu Wendong tried to make, reload the modern bullets that have been used, and then shoot shiyan on modern weapons to test their performance.

The second is to disassemble a small number of unused 7.62 mm bullets, use self-produced gunpowder to replace the original loading of detonators and propellants, and try and test them on modern weapons and self-produced rifles of the same caliber that are modeled after the Soviet Union's Mosin Nagant M1944 rifle. Of course, this shiyan can also be carried out with reloading bullets.

So, on the first day of November, all the brothers who participated in the artillery shiyan last time again gathered in the southern district of the "Liangyuan" to prepare for the application of the new gunpowder shiyan.

The first to carry out shiyan was reloading, with a total of twenty rounds of 5.8 mm rifle rounds and twenty rounds of 7.62 mm machine gun rounds in the mechanical and weapons sections. For safety reasons, the shiyan of both types of shells was fired with a long rope drawn from a distance. Qian Yuanshan, who participated in Shiyan, fixed the Type 95 rifle on an iron frame specially built for Shiyan, tied a long rope to the trigger of the rifle, and then pulled the other end of the rope to retreat behind a steel plate and pulled the rope hard. After hearing the sound of "bang", a puff of smoke erupted from the muzzle of the Type 95 rifle, and the target made of a thin wooden plank about 50 meters away from the rifle also shook slightly.

After waiting for a few seconds, Qian Yuanshan walked out from behind the steel plate, first went to the side of the 95 rifle to observe the body of the gun, and saw that there was nothing abnormal, so he came to the target to check. A small clear hole appeared in the thin plank, apparently caused by the bullet penetration. So, Qian Yuanshan beckoned to the other brothers behind the steel plate and motioned for everyone to come and have a look.

Everyone was very happy when they saw the clear hole in the target, because this small hole meant that homemade initiating charges and propellants could be used, and everyone was one step closer to more advanced firearms.

Subsequently, under Qian Yuanshan's operation, the remaining 19 rounds of 5.8 mm rounds were first fired, and after confirming that the Type 95 rifle used as Shiyan did not suffer any obvious damage, he used the side-by-side machine gun to fire 20 rounds of 7.62 mm rounds, which was also successful.

However, although the initial shiyan of reloading bullets on modern weapons was successful, neither the weapons department, the mechanical department, the chemical department, nor the military department planned to carry out a larger-scale related shiyan. Because Liu Wendong knew very well that the gunpowder he produced was definitely not on the same level as the products produced by the modern arsenal in his previous life, and the frequent use of modern weapons for shiyan would definitely cause damage to modern weapons. If this renders valuable modern weapons ineffective, the losses will be too great. So, after a total of forty shots, Shiyan moved on to the Shiyan part with a homemade rifle. ,

The homemade Shiyan rifle is much larger than the modern weapon Shiyan, with five rifles in use alone, plus 100 rounds of modified 7.62 mm ammunition (which is the maximum number that can be accepted by the Ministry of Military Affairs and Security), and 300 rounds of reloaded 7.62 mm ammunition. Shiyan was taken by brothers from the Military Department and the Security Department to take turns pulling the long rope, and one hundred rounds of modified bullets were fired at Shiyan on five rifles, and three hundred rounds of reloaded bullets were fired at Shiyan. The sound of "bang, bang" sounded in the southern area of "Liangyuan" for an afternoon, and did not stop until late in the evening.

The brothers were quite satisfied with Shiyan's results, first of all, the five rifles did not explode or crack when each of the five rifles was fired an average of 80 times, indicating that the structural strength of the homemade rifles was not too bad. Secondly, the second part of the shiyan fired a total of four hundred shots, of which three hundred and eighty-five were fired successfully with one shot, twelve with two successful shots, and the remaining dozen or so were either fired twice or more than three times on both sides, or simply stink bombs. From a proportional point of view, this one-shot success rate is still acceptable.

With the initial success of shooting Shiyan, the hearts and minds of the Ministry of Military Affairs and the Ministry of Security were again active. After the committee made a decision that the Chemical Industry Section would go all out to produce these two new types of gunpowder and step up the research and development of new types of explosives, Xu Shaoan, Qian Yuanshan, Zeng Zhilin, and others seized the opportunity to propose to the committee that they hoped that the Weapons Section would produce a certain number of homemade rifles and reloading bullets for the two departments while producing pre-loaded artillery, so that the members of the two departments could adapt to this new type of weapon as soon as possible and lay the foundation for future rearmament.

Maybe Shiyan was in a good mood after the success of the day, or maybe it was because he couldn't always give his brothers face, so Li Junwu, Zhou Lei and others did not criticize Xu Shao'an, Qian Yuanshan, Zeng Zhilin and others for their requests this time, and some of them liked the new and hated the old as they did last time, but agreed to their suggestions after discussion, and decided to make 20 rifles and 600 rounds of reloading ammunition for them for the adaptive training of their soldiers.

However, in order to be more suitable for use in this era, the Weapons Section made certain modifications to the original design when producing these twenty rifles. The original reference to the Soviet Mosin Nagant M1944 rifle was changed to an earlier Mosin Nagant M1891/30 rifle Type II. The latter rifle surpasses the former in both full length and barrel length, and when equipped with a bayonet, it is more conducive to engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy when the ammunition runs out or there is no time to reload.

On the proposal of the Weapons Section, the rifle to be produced was named the "Five-Five" rifle by the Commission. The reason for this name is, on the one hand, because the year is 955 AD, and the name "55" style is in line with the general law of the previous life. On the other hand, because this year is the fifth year of the Liao Ying calendar, and at the same time, it borrows the homonym of "five" and "nothing", which shows that this is a breakthrough in the self-made modern weapons of the crossing team "from scratch", and the two fives are together.

The name of this model was well received by everyone, so not only the new rifle, but also the previously finalized front-loading gun was named the "Five-Five" type to indicate its milestone significance.

);