Chapter 276 New Artillery Development

On the way Lucia took the ore to meet His Royal Highness, Nightingale's words were still ringing in her ears.

It has to be said that she was shocked by the calm attitude shown by the other party.

Although I don't understand much about feelings, the witch and the prince... can't be together at all, right? In this way, shouldn't one carefully hide one's thoughts in the bottom of one's heart and not let the other party know?

Moreover, why even as an audience member, she would feel flushed and embarrassed?

Standing at the door of the office and taking a deep breath, Lucia opened the door and entered.

"Your Highness, I brought the ore."

"Let me see," Roland yawned.

The border town's ruler looked the same as usual, he looked sleepy, he should have just woken up from a nap, he leaned back in the chair, his expression was natural, his tone was easy-going, not as sharp as other nobles at all.

Lucia's inexplicably nervous mood also relaxed a lot. She took out the ore particles found in the mine on the north slope from her skin bag, and placed them on the desk one by one.

After being decomposed by energy, these particles all looked about the same, the color was either silvery white or grayish white, probably only the knowledgeable and talented Prince could tell what kind of ore it was.

The prince frowned and looked at it for a long time, weighed them one by one in the palm of his hand, looked at them carefully with the sunlight behind him, and finally waved his hand and said, "Ahem, I will hand over these ores to Mr. Strull to identify them. , you continue to go to the North Slope backyard to practice your abilities, and ask Anna for advice if you don’t understand.”

"..." Hey, don't you even know His Highness? Lucia quickly lowered her head and said, "Yes."

Just as she was about to leave the office, Roland stopped her again.

"By the way, your test scores this time are pretty good, ranking ninth with a score of 68. It's not easy to have such a performance after studying with everyone for a month, and you have to keep it up. And..." He paused After a pause, "In the next test, I hope Ling can participate with everyone."

"Yes!" Lucia replied excitedly.

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After watching the little girl bow happily and leave, Roland looked at the metal particles on the table and sighed.

He was still too naive, thinking that after decomposing into simple substances, he might be able to find out what mineral veins were hidden in the North Slope mine, but the facts made him understand the huge gap between mechanical engineering and geology. Three to four kinds of metals will be differentiated, and the one with the largest amount can be considered as the ore of this type of metal, but they are almost the same in color and shape, for example, iron, aluminum, magnesium, and potassium are all in a high-purity state. Silver-white metal, it is too difficult to distinguish with the naked eye.

It is better to leave this problem to the chief alchemist to solve, after all, it is much more reliable to verify the characteristics of materials through chemical reactions than guessing by yourself.

After finishing this matter, Roland took out a piece of paper and began to plan how to deal with this year's Demon Moon.

Seeing that summer was coming to an end soon, the three months of autumn were his final preparation time. In addition to defending against the evil beasts invading from the west, he had to keep an eye on Timothy and the church in the east at all times. No better than last year when he was struggling, the population and income under his rule have increased significantly, the output of iron smelting is also gradually increasing, and there are more than a dozen witches. He is absolutely sure to turn the Western Territory into an insurmountable iron wall. .

According to the previous year's combat experience, the biggest threat to the city wall is undoubtedly the hybrid evil beast, especially when the enemy has a thick carapace and the bullets are difficult to pierce. Either approach and use explosives, or send a witch out of the city to fight, no matter what it is Any countermeasures will greatly increase the risk.

In addition, most of the similar enemies he faced were cavalry and infantry, and he had not seen the siege weapons of this era. If the opponent can set up a torsion trebuchet, or a more advanced counterweight trebuchet, I am afraid I will encounter a lot of trouble. After all, it is very inconvenient to shoot downwards with the front-loaded artillery. Every time you reload, you need to raise the muzzle again. Also easy to roll out of the barrel.

The development of a more powerful artillery was imperative.

Roland thought about it, and listed the indicators he needed on the paper one by one.

First of all, it should have enough range and power to penetrate the carapace of a hybrid evil beast at a distance of one thousand meters. Secondly, it must be a rear-loading ammunition that can freely adjust the pitch angle, and at the same time have the ability to shoot quickly. Finally, in order to reduce the time for repeated research and development, the multi-purpose gun should be considered in the design, that is, it can be used as a fixed fort to suppress the enemy, or it can be directly pulled onto the ship and used as the main weapon of the shallow water heavy artillery ship in the future.

So it should be a heavy gun with a large caliber and a long barrel.

Roland's first thought was of those 15- to 6-inch behemoths on the battleship, with a range of tens of kilometers, and a single shot could dig several meters of deep holes in the ground, but he quickly rejected this unrealistic idea. Although there is no problem with the processing, but based on the current level of materials in Border Town, at least nine out of ten cannons will blow up the chamber. Even if the wall of the tube is thickened to more than one meter, the things produced will be useless because they cannot be moved. value.

At most, he can only produce wrought iron with high purity and steel with ordinary performance. It is better to be conservative in the plan.

Roland finally settled on the sacred number of 152mm.

The artillery adopts a vertical wedge-type breech block, which is similar to a door that can slide up and down. When it is lowered, the gun bore is exposed, the shell is loaded, and the lock is realized after being reset upwards, so that the gunpowder gas is erupted forward. Compared with the screw breech breech block and the transverse wedge breech breech block, it has the fastest firing speed, and its principle is also very simple, and its mechanical structure has long been familiar to him.

However, in order to achieve rapid firing, the artillery must be equipped with a retreat and recoil mechanism. Simply put, it is like two pumps, one filled with oil, and the other for recoil spring or gas. When the muzzle recoils, the two connecting rods are pulled, and the oil and recoil machine are compressed at the same time. The oil is used to buffer the recoil, and the recoil spring completes the force storage, and pushes the barrel back to its original position after the shelling is completed.

And finally the shells.

Now that the sacred cannon is used, it is natural that he can no longer be satisfied with the clumsy solid iron ball and paper-wrapped shotgun. Out of consideration for safety, Roland decided to develop two kinds of fixed shells at the same time, one is an enlarged version of the bullet, and the bullet is made of solid metal. ; The other is an explosive warhead with a trigger fuze, which is the howitzer of later generations. After all, the latter has certain technical difficulties, and the reliability of the fuze needs to be tested repeatedly, and there is no guarantee that the troops will be assembled before the Demon Moon, so it is very necessary to produce the former first to solve the problem. Even with solid bullets, it is easy to deal with slow-moving thick-armored evil beasts and fixed siege equipment.

Of course, no matter what kind of shell it is, it needs to consume a lot of smokeless gunpowder. Before the large-scale production of the two acids, the new artillery can only be used as a special weapon, and it is impossible to achieve a hearty artillery coverage.

At this moment, the guard opened the door and walked in.

"Your Highness, there is a secret letter from the capital."

Roland put down the quill and opened the envelope. The letter was not signed from the beginning to the end, and the handwriting was very strange, but the content of just one sentence showed that the letter was undoubtedly sent by Tasa.

A team of about a thousand people left the capital today and headed towards the west. (To be continued.,, your support is my biggest motivation.)