Chapter 106 New rocket artillery

Liu Hou took the three queens to visit the garden on the Shangyuan Festival, and did not encounter the expected dream of visiting the garden, but met Mi Zhao and Kong Ci, two young men with great potential. After bidding farewell to the two teenagers, Liu Hou and his entourage felt bored after playing for a while and returned to the palace.

At this time, the Shangyuan Festival was far less lively than that of later generations, and the time for the Lantern Festival was also short, just celebrating and having fun on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, compared with the Tang Dynasty for three days, the Song Dynasty for five days, and the Ming Dynasty for a full ten days, it was simply very simple.

Liu Hou also didn't want the people to focus too much on fun, as a ruler, of course, the more energy the people put into production, the better, so as to create more social wealth, so he had no intention of changing the celebration time of this festival.

After the fifteenth, the official yamen began to work, and the palace also resumed normal court meetings. Liu Hou was not interested in political facts, and political affairs were basically entrusted to Zhuge Liang and Bu Qi and others. If it weren't for the fear of telling people that he was negligent and left a bad reputation in history, he wouldn't want to go to court.

Now it is once every five days, and the ministers will accumulate the things that need to be decided by the emperor himself, and they will be discussed at the court meeting every five days, and finally decided by the emperor. With Zhuge Liang, an expert in internal affairs, Liu Hou basically just made a symbolic appearance at the court meeting to show his attitude, and there are actually not many things he needs to worry about.

The main thing he worries about is to prepare for war, and he plans to launch a war of aggression against Wei and Wu as much as possible, oh, no, it should be a war to recover his homeland.

Most of his time is either going to the barracks to inspect the reorganization and training of the troops, or to the weapons research institute of the "Ministry of Industry." Recently, some new weapons have been intensified, and he is very concerned about this.

On the second day of February, the dragon raises its head, this day is also commonly known as the Green Dragon Festival, and legend has it that this day is the day when the dragon king in charge of clouds and rain raises his head, which also means that the rain will gradually increase after that. Some people also believe that the "dragon raises its head" refers to the fact that the insects begin to wake up in early spring. As the saying goes, "On the second day of February, the dragon raises its head, and scorpions and centipedes show their heads." ”

This day is very important for farming, and there is a saying: "On the second day of February, the dragon raises its head, and everyone ploughs the cattle in small households." At this time, the yang energy is rising, the earth is thawing, and spring plowing is about to begin, which is the time to transport manure and prepare for farming.

On the second day of February every year, "the emperor's mother sends food, and the emperor drives the ploughing", according to the tradition, the imperial court will hold a heavy ceremony on this day, the emperor will take the lead in personally plowing the field, and the civil and military officials will also personally plough one acre and three points of land, in order to show the importance of the imperial court to farming.

When Zhuge Liang came to invite Liu Hou to participate in this festival event, Liu Hou refused at first, he said in his heart, I can't say that if you let me participate, I will participate, I have more important things to do. Just last night, the Weapons Research Institute informed him that the transformation of the "Keqiu Killing" had been completed, and he asked the emperor to take the time to move and inspect it.

Liu Hou wanted to go to the "Ministry of Industry" to see the new rocket artillery, but he really had no intention of participating in any dragon raising his head to plow the fields. But Zhuge Liang didn't give up, pulled him and refused to let go, and told him a lot of big truths, what "the people take food as the sky", what "Shi farmers and industry and commerce", agriculture is the foundation of the country, what "those who are diligent in politics are important in supporting the people; Those who govern the country well must first enrich the people" and so on.

Liu Hou felt that he was like a political teacher, talking about political theories one by one, and he was dizzy, worthy of Zhuge Liang, who was a Confucian debater, and his eloquence was not ordinarily good. Even the Eastern Wu Qunru couldn't resist his tongue offensive alone, and how could Liu Hou, a young man, resist it, so he had to agree to attend this event in the end.

Early in the morning, Liu Hou and the three queens led the civil and military officials to the fields outside the city, as usual, they first offered three animals to worship heaven and earth, read a speech prepared by Zhuge Liang in advance, and personally helped the plough and drove the oxen to plough the field.

As the emperor, Liu Hou only needs to symbolically plough the matter and then hand over the plough to Zhuge Liang, who will represent the emperor and plough the remaining one acre and three points of land.

After Zhuge Liang began to plough the land, the civil and military officials also began to move, they all have their own ploughing oxen and ploughs, they can not symbolically plough the field, they need to plough one acre and three points of land, for the usual pampered officials and masters, this work is very hard.

After Liu Hou finished playing the symbolic meaning, he sat down at Jindun under the umbrella of Huang Luo, eating the pastries brought by the three empresses while watching the other officials complete the activity, the whole activity was like an outing for the emperor and officials.

Of course, Liu Hou is the only one here who thinks so, the ancients attached great importance to farming, and everyone else here thinks that it is a solemn, solemn activity, even a sacred activity.

Liu Hou was distracted all morning, and he was so bent on finishing this boring activity as soon as possible that he could go to the "Ministry of Industry" to watch the test launch of the new bazooka.

Finally, it was not until the end of the dragon raising its head that the activity was over, and the emperor could take the first step to drive back to the palace, and after the emperor left, the hundred officials could leave. However, Liu Hou did not go back to the palace directly, but went to the "Ministry of Industry" instead.

The field where the dragon raised its head was also held was also in the southern suburbs of Chengdu City, not far from the "Ministry of Industry", so Liu Hou and his entourage soon came to the "Ministry of Industry".

The Weapons Research Institute had already been notified of the emperor's arrival and was ready to test the new bazooka, and Liu Hou was directly led to the shooting range to watch the test launch.

When Liu Hou's Huang Luo umbrella appeared at the shooting range, a large number of people knelt down in the shooting range. Among these people were officials of the "Ministry of Industry," such as Dong Yun, and there were persons in charge of the weapons research institute and technicians involved in the research and development of new weapons, such as Ma Jun, but what attracted Liu Hou's attention the most was the 50 soldiers who were neatly arranged in five rows.

Each of the fifty soldiers had a large iron cylinder under his feet, which was supported by a rudimentary support, the mouth of which pointed diagonally to the sky in front of him. This is the newly developed individual rocket launcher.

When Liu Hou captured Chengdu, he once experimented with the "Keqiu Kill" rocket artillery, which was incredibly powerful, firing 50 rockets at a time, and could carry out a covering strike on an area.

However, this type of rocket artillery is bulky and bulky, making it inconvenient to carry and transport. Although the base of the "Keqiu Kill" is equipped with steel wheels, which can be dragged around by cattle and horses, the road conditions in this era are very poor, many roads are dirt roads, and the heavy "Keqiu Kill" can easily make the steel wheels sink into the soil.

Moreover, in the course of the war, it is often necessary to march into the barren mountains and mountains, and it is difficult for such a bulky guy to cross the mountains even if he is pulled by oxen. So after the last battle, Liu Hou asked the Weapons Research Institute to develop a new type of rocket artillery that is lighter and easier to carry.

Later, Ma Jun came up with an idea, that is, to break up the "Keqiu Kill" with fifty barrels, dismantle it into separate launch canisters, and install a simple bracket that can be folded on each bazooka. In this way, each bazooka weighs only about ten pounds in total.

In normal times, as long as the bracket is folded, a single soldier can run all over the mountain on his back, which completely solves the transportation problem. When it is necessary to use it, as long as you open the bracket, put the bazooka on the ground, and adjust the elevation angle of the bracket according to the distance of the fire, you can carry out the launch.

This process has high requirements for artillery, the artillery must first aim at a very distant target, the artillery also needs to be able to measure the distance, adjust the elevation angle of the bazooka according to the measured distance, of course, in most cases, the commander uniformly stipulates the firing distance, but there are also free shooting times, at this time the artillery needs to master the firing distance.

The distance is already marked directly on the dial of the elevation angle, which is based on the empirical value obtained from a large number of real yàn. Artillery does not calculate ballistics, after all, it is necessary to consider factors such as gravity, air resistance, and geostrophic deflection force, and the calculation process is too complicated, not to mention the primitive people of the Three Kingdoms era, even Liu Hou, who has received higher education, will not count.

Therefore, Liu Hou adopted the simplest and most effective method - to take the route of empiricism. Let the real yàn personnel test fire some rockets at each scale, measure how many meters they fly on average, and record this value directly next to the scale, so that we don't have to worry about how many influencing factors there are, anyway, we just know how far this angle can hit.

This requires that the rocket must be produced in a standardized manner, and the amount of charge, the weight and shape of the rocket must be exactly the same, so as to ensure the accuracy of the maximum range. It can also be seen from here that the accuracy of rocket artillery is really average, and there are often deviations of more than ten meters or even tens of meters.

In actual combat, many soldiers like to carry the bazooka on their shoulders and aim at the enemy with the naked eye, which is often very effective against targets at a closer distance, but this is a later story, so I won't say much here.

Liu Hou delivered an impassioned speech on behalf of the imperial court, greatly praised the R&D team, and gave appropriate rewards to the members of the R&D team, and then the test launch began.

Zhu Yuan had already adjusted his shooting, and only listened to the officer's order, and the fifty soldiers lit the fire in unison, and the sound of "brushing, brushing, brushing" sounded, and all fifty rocket shells flew out within ten seconds, shooting into the target group two miles away. The characteristics of rocket artillery are destined to be unable to shoot very accurately, so Ma Jun has dozens of scarecrows placed in an area of about 300 square meters to simulate an enemy unit as a target.

After Liu Hou saw that the rocket artillery flew out, the fire in the target area flickered continuously, and at the same time, a large cloud of smoke screen was raised, followed by a rumbling continuous explosion sound, and he even felt a slight vibration under his feet, the momentum of this rocket artillery was indeed terrifying.

Fifty soldiers adjusted their muzzles to re-aim at the new target, and then quickly reloaded their ammunition and fired at the target area in the other direction, where more than a dozen pieces were placed

And that's not even counting the fact that the fifty artillerymen put on new rockets and fired at the third target area, where a dozen or so wooden stakes draped in armor were placed, and unsurprisingly, most of the rockets hit this area.

Liu Hou noticed that the soldiers reloaded the reload process quickly, almost in a second or two—they actually just picked up the rockets placed next to them and threw them into the bazookas.

However, it took about 10 seconds to aim at the same time, and with the ignition, it took about 20 seconds and no more than 30 seconds to launch a rocket. This process is not known how much faster than the reloading process of artillery.