Chapter 296 Tyrol Arsenal

Austria, Tyrol

In a valley with mountains and forests, there are several ancient courtyards.

On one side is a steep cliff, and on the other side is a clear and cold lake. The lake and mountains echo the snow and frost for thousands of years, making people feel as if they are in a fairyland with few people.

Only a circle of very abrupt fences destroys the beauty, and the wooden sign of Schroeder Lumberyard hanging on the gate makes people feel vulgar.

This farmhouse workshop, which looks ordinary on the outside, hides a huge secret that outsiders are unaware of-a secret research center for new weapons, and the final test of the breech-loading rifle is being carried out intensively inside.

If you are a sharp-eyed professional, you can see at a glance that the completion of this gun is higher than that of Dreiser's rifle, and even the major problem that has troubled the entire world's weapons industry-airtightness has been solved.

Although the research center occupies a small area, it is small but complete. There are not only special gunpowder factories and fine iron factories inside, but also a rubber factory, and the sealing rubber ring is their masterpiece.

Nowadays, countries around the world, including Prussia, still use the single-point hook cutting method to make gun rifling. This method has been used as early as the 16th century, but it has a fatal flaw, which is low efficiency.

Craftsmen who use this rifling method must use a sufficiently hard and sharp hook-shaped knife to turn and cut inside the barrel, slowly cutting out the rifling one by one.

Generally speaking, one rifling needs to be drawn more than 20 times. If you want to make a good gun, you need to draw the same rifling more than 100 times, because the more times you draw, the finer and tighter the groove will be.

But a gun barrel usually has 6-8 rifling, and at that time it was almost all done by hand, which was a terrifying workload. However, precisely because of the quality guarantee, the craftsmanship of gunsmiths is often sought after.

Of course, Franz would not adopt this method. Instead, he suggested the die extrusion method, which is a method that has been used since the late World War II.

In fact, the manufacturing process is not complicated. First, drill a hole slightly smaller than the barrel, then use a high-hardness die with a protrusion corresponding to the rifling, and then use the assistance of a high-pressure machine to press down from the hole while rotating, so as to squeeze the inner side of the barrel into rifling and yang.

This method has three obvious advantages. The first is precision. The rifling produced by the die extrusion method can be equivalent to hundreds of times of broaching by a skilled gunsmith.

The second is the unparalleled manufacturing speed. A master and his apprentice hammered and hammered a month to complete the work, but it only takes more than ten minutes in this arsenal (the speed of engraving rifling).

If we only compare the output of gun barrels, Franz's small arsenal has a daily output of rifled gun barrels that exceeds the total of the entire German Federation.

The third is the price. With the help of the hydraulic press, the entire cost has dropped sharply to only a few tens of times that of handmade guns.

This factory also produces a brand new bullet, which is the famous Minié bullet in later generations.

Unlike the spherical bullets that needed to be struck with an iron rod when loading, the diameter of this conical bullet was slightly smaller than the diameter of the barrel. At the same time, in order to match the use of breech-loading guns, Franz added a wooden or paper shell to the bottom of the bullet.

When loading, just put the bullet into the barrel, close the bolt, and pull the trigger. The firing pin stimulates the explosion of the fulminate of mercury at the bottom of the bullet, and the gas compresses the wooden plug, causing the bottom to expand and close to the rifling, closing the gap between the bullet and the barrel, so that the gas cannot leak out, and the bullet can be rotated at high speed under the pressure of the rifling.

This bullet can greatly improve the range and accuracy of the rifle. The range of this unnamed rifle can reach a terrifying 800 meters, which is twice that of the M1841 Dreiser rifle at this time. In addition, the bullet has very good stopping power and amazing lethality, and the firing rate is as high as 12 rounds per minute.

However, this was not a work that satisfied Franz, because the design of metal fixed bullets could be completed at this time. In fact, the earliest metal fixed bullets appeared as early as 1836, but they had no direct relationship with the modern fixed bullets. It was a pin-fire bullet, but it did effectively increase the airtightness of the breech-loading gun.

Franz did try to tinker with modern metal fixed bullets, but what he didn't expect was that due to the problem of propellant, the power of this bullet was very touching.

Not to mention killing people, there was even a chance that it could not penetrate the target made of hardwood. Later, an engineer proposed to use nitroglycerin, and Franz knew that this was the main component of the yellow gunpowder that was widely used later.

So he promised the engineer named William Ogel 500,000 florins as long as he could develop a safe propellant.

Then the engineer was directly blown to death during the first test. Due to the special nature of the work, the Austrian government had to declare to his family that he had encountered a mining accident.

William Ogel and his two assistants were also the first victims of the arsenal. Franz was well aware of the risks of developing smokeless gunpowder, but he had to do it because the competition in military technology was a war of life and death, and there was no room for mercy.

Vincent Augustin, Austria's chief weapons expert, was a very conservative person, but after seeing the invention of the arsenal, he joined the army of military reform.

Historically, Austrian artillery went astray. Due to the disastrous defeat during the Napoleonic Wars and the military reforms of Archduke Karl, they worshipped artillery.

This "big" is in the physical sense. The Austrians like to make large-caliber artillery, but their steelmaking technology in history was too poor, and the steel they made was of poor quality and expensive.

So the Austrians chose to use bronze to cast cannons. Yes, they chose the technology of the last century, but after these people's magic modification, they made a muzzle-loading cannon that fired faster than a breech-loading cannon.

However, bronze casting cannons have always been a counter-trend behavior. Finally, with the end of the Austro-Prussian War, the Austrian Empire's dream of artillery also ended.

In fact, unlike what many people imagine, the Krupp cannons of Prussia not only failed to suppress the Austrians' bronze cannons, but were beaten by the Austrians' bronze cannons.

Of course, Krupp also absorbed the Austrians' cannon-making technology. Later, in the Franco-Prussian War, Krupp cannons showed their power and established their important position in the world's military history.

However, at this time, Austria's steel quality was the best in the world, especially in the field of special steel, which was far beyond this era.

Manganese steel cannons became an inevitable choice. If other European countries wanted to mass-produce manganese steel, it would not only be a technical problem, but also a resource problem, because only Austria and Russia in the whole of Europe had large-scale manganese mines.

This material of cannon did not have a substitute until World War I, so Franz could safely and boldly let these engineers build "big" cannons.