Chapter 549- Discussing Firearms Again
Translator: ryangohsf
Editor: Nora
After he walked out from the Silver Prayer House, Ouyang Shuo turned around and left the imperial city, heading toward the south city region.
The south city region was the expanding military region.
A month had passed since the Black Snake Guards found the Ming Dynasty Firearm Making Manual in the king's palace. Who knows how the research of Liu Mo and the others had progressed since then.
Since he had returned to Shanhai City, Ouyang Shuo naturally needed to go and take a look.
Firearms represented the highest level and the main direction of their future weapons technology.
The Ming Dynasty firearms had two types. Firstly, handguns and arquebuses; they had small sizes and were usually equipped with iron or lead bullets with a ten to two hundred step range.
If converted into meters, the maximum range would be around two hundred to three hundred meters.
Out of the handguns, the more famous ones included the Three Eyed Gun, Guaizi Gun, Lianzi Gun, Thunder Gun, and Wulei Shenji.
Amongst these guns, one had to mention the Guaizi Gun.
It was an arquebus with a curved handle that could be fired in bursts. It had length of 37.5 centimeters and had a reload style similar to a western gun. It could fire three shots consecutively with a range of 150 meters. The Ming Dynasty termed it as a gun that would win against the western styled guns in ten thousand battles.
The second type would be the guns fixed onto frames, the large-sized cannons. These cannons would use large rocks, iron, lead, or simply solid bullets as ammunition. A small number of them would be equipped with explosive spherical bullets. These cannons had a range of a few hundred miles to two to three thousand miles. It was mainly used for defence and sieging cities and was used in land, water, and sea battles.
Hong Xiuquan had mainly focused on the second type of firearms from before.
The cannons in Tianjing City were transported over to Shanhai City for the No.7 Research Institute to research.
The more famous types of Ming Dynasty cannons were the short barreled mortar, the western style cannon, and the Hongyi Cannon.
Amongst these cannons, the Hongyi Cannon was called the General Cannon. It was built with western technology at the end of the Ming Dynasty. It had trunnions and aiming distance. It had an adjustable range, and the cannon would last for a long time. The large ones weighed 1.6 tonnes and could shoot up to 1.9 kilometers.
Apart from handguns and cannons, there was one more type of firearms—missiles. Missiles included the Cluster Missiles, the Flying Crow, and the Fire Dragon Comes Out of the Water.
The Flying Crow had a crow-shaped body filled with explosives. The gunpowder had a connecting gunpowder line to the gunpowder box, which was in charge of sending the missile into the air.
When shot, the gunpowder string would ignite and make the middle section fly, causing the missile to fly toward the enemy. Then, the gunpowder inside the crow would explode. It was an excellent weapon for sieging and destroying enemy formations, as it would help to destroy troops and burn their horses.
As the name Fire Dragon Comes Out of the Water suggests, this weapon was exceedingly effective in water battles. It was a missile with many layers. The first layer missile was wrapped around with paper, while inside the mouth of the dragon, there was a second layer that increased the range of the missile. It was used during water attacks and had a range of up to 1.5 kilometers.
It seemed like the Ming Dynasty firearms were really advanced and could be used in real battles. However, when compared to the standards of west, they were not even on the same level.
Let us talk about the handguns.
The Three Eyed Gun was the primary handgun of the Ming Dynasty, but its real killing range failed to even reach ten meters. Only in a four meter range did it possess a higher killing ability. Moreover, it was not accurate, and it could only serve as a stick to hit the opponent if you missed.
The Guaizi Gun was a handgun taken from the west. Unfortunately, the limits of their own technology meant that they could not replicate and produce it.
Even if they could, be it in terms of safety or strength, it would be significantly reduced.
Firstly, the material.
In terms of metallurgy, the Chinese rarely used pig iron and wrought iron. However, the barrel of the handgun needed to be crafted from these materials. This made it extremely difficult for the Chinese people. It reached a point where they had to give up.
However, Shanhai City had already solved this dilemma.
Before Ouyang Shuo left Shanhai City, he had already planned the steel industry. As of right now, all ten steel factories had reached completion, and they had begun production.
The Financial Department had thrown in a large amount of gold to purchase thousands of units of iron ore and coal to support the production requirements of the factories.
Let us talk about cannons.
The so-called short barreled cannon had an exceedingly thick cannon bore because of the tragedy of the Chinese’s metallurgy. Moreover, it could only could shoot a snooker ball sized stone out one hundred meters. The distance could not be adjusted, and it did not even have a wheel.
The western style cannon was a cannon that faded from use in western small merchant ships, and it was called a toy without actual fighting strength. However, this item became a great firearm when placed in the Ming Dynasty.
This firearm exceeded all the high-end technology items produced in the country during the Ming Dynasty. Without westerners teaching them, they could not produce these cannons.
The cannons the Chinese produced often blew up in the barrel. The number of Chinese killed by these cannons often exceeded the number of enemies the cannon itself killed.
This was a tragedy from head to tail.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, they brought in western technology. The Hongyi Cannon created at that time was the strongest firearm in the entire Ming Dynasty. In essence, it was no different from the western style cannon; it was just bigger and had a larger range.
The Ming Dynasty standards in terms of building large-sized cannons were appalling. The cannons were lousy in quality and all useless products. Hence, they needed westerners to succeed, but the quality still remained terrible. For example, the body of the cannon was exceedingly thick, being two meters in length. It was a giant cannon that they claimed could shoot up to ten miles, but in truth, it could only reach one mile.
In comparison, the Super Movable Cannon built during the Mogul Dynasty had a length of three meters, while the cannon barrel reached twenty meters. It weighed fifty tonnes and had a twenty kilometer range.
Between the two of them, there was completely a lack of grounds for comparison.
Hence, after Ouyang Shuo obtained the Ming Dynasty Firearm Making Technical Manual, he did not plan to build each and every firearm described the manual.
Of course, to the current Shanhai City, achieving such a feat was not difficult.
Ouyang Shuo wanted to use the technical manual as a blueprint to modify and improve the firearms.
His first goal would be to come up with a firearm at the same standard as western firearms. He also wanted a new type of cannon.
Only that.
As for other firearms like handguns and rockets, he was not interested in them at the moment.
Only like that could Ouyang Shuo lead the China region and prevent them from repeating the tragedies of history in the world wars.
And to achieve this point, Shanhai City would have to build up a perfect industry system. Building the steel factories was only one step in this system.