Chapter 155: 155The Price of Growth
Chapter 155 155 The Price of Growth
If Tang Mo knew that in the distant Yangmu Kingdom, a group of weapons designers had unknowingly gone astray, he would definitely laugh very happily.
After all, this prank-like ending is very funny. Although he admires this kind of hard work and courage to try, naturally he will not forget that the elves owe him a large sum of money.
This made him feel no sympathy for the suffering of the Poplar Kingdom at all, and he even felt secretly happy.
Unfortunately, he does not know that the elves of the Poplar Kingdom are stitching together his two outdated weapons.
Because while the Yangmu Kingdom was developing its own characteristic weapons, Tang Mo also did not stop developing weapons.
Although he transferred a large amount of steel to the giant steel ship, the remaining steel can still support his small-scale production of epoch-making automatic weapons.
This weapon is the legendary Maxim machine gun, the battlefield killer that shined in the First World War, the sickle of death, the fully automatic typewriter of the Lord of Hell...
Anyway, this weapon completely overturned the model of war as soon as it came out, and completely swept the original tactics into the garbage heap of history.
The Maxim machine gun was designed by a less professional person. His name was Maxim, and the Chinese translation is the name of the gun "Maxin" heavy machine gun.
Before designing this kind of weapon, he actually started to get into contact with machinery from a wind mill. On the one hand, this really proves his genius, and on the other hand, it also proves that the design of this kind of machine gun is actually not very complicated.
In fact, this is indeed the case. The composition of this machine gun is not very complicated, so it has few malfunctions and is easy to maintain.
Even in the Qing Dynasty, Luther could be imitated, and even hundreds of years later, the ancient Maxim machine gun could still be used. All of this proved from the side that this thing was simple and crude.
The design idea of this weapon is very simple. It uses the exhaust gas generated after the ammunition is fired as power to drive the device to complete the work of loading a new round of bullets.
This energy allows the gun to brake cyclically, which theoretically enables the gun to load and fire automatically, which is to realize weapon automation in the true sense!
At the Maxim Factory in Tangmo, the simplest gas brake mechanical device was produced and named the fuel blowback system.
The bolt of this automatic firing device is only tightly held by a spring and has no locking handle or locking bolt.
At the moment when the gunpowder in the bullet case is detonated, the bolt is still in a restricted state. It does not move backward quickly until the gas pressure in the cartridge overcomes the mass of the bolt, and then cycles in exactly the same way as a recoil brake gun. brake.
Obviously, this method is mechanically simpler than the recoil braking system, so it is relatively less expensive and easier to manufacture and maintain.
There have been some more or less successful attempts to delay or impede this blowback system. One of the simplest methods is to overcome an artificial mechanical obstacle before releasing the bolt to cycle.
Maxim's automatic system has a barrel locking device, similar to a bolt, which is a pair of interacting parts joined together so that they can work at the same time, just like a human joint.
After the barrel and bolt have traveled a certain distance rearward together, the bolt "splits" downward as it passes a cam surface on the receiver. From this position, the bolt acts independently on a helical spring, which Continuing to move backward under the force, the spring re-engages the bolt after returning, fixing the position of the barrel and bolt on the machine gun.
This action actually completes the loading of bullets in two steps: a bullet is pulled out of the cartridge belt by the bullet catcher, and at the same time, the empty cartridge case is also ejected from the cartridge chamber.
The bullets, both unused and used, have their edges stuck in a vertical notch. Before the bolt begins its forward impact, the bullet catcher moves down, ejecting the empty cartridge case and simultaneously extracting a new bullet and aligning it with the breech of the gun.
When the bullet is loaded, the bullet catcher returns to the upper position. And continue to use its lower end to grasp the edge of the newly loaded bullet, locking the two main components of the barrel and bolt.
All in all, all in all, this system is precise and efficient. It can provide the Maxim machine gun with a continuous shooting capability. It will not stop until the hot barrel boils the cooling water in front of the barrel. .
This set of exquisite mechanical structures has been produced in Tang Mo's factory and has been put together.
Using the gunpowder gas ejected by the bullet during shooting, the gun completes a series of actions such as unlocking, ejecting the shell, feeding the bullet, and re-locking, etc., realizing automatic continuous shooting of the single-barreled gun and reducing the recoil of the gun. When Tang Mo was experimenting with this new weapon, Loew and Redman suddenly realized why Tang Mo required all soldiers to learn to crawl.
Charging in goose-step in front of such a weapon is almost the same as courting death. Arranging a square formation in front of such a weapon is literally courting death.
It was precisely because of seeing this weapon that everyone understood why Tang Mo declared so confidently that if the opponent came with 20,000 people, it would not be enough to kill him.
Indeed, the Cyric troops who didn't know that Tang Mo had this super weapon might lose 1,000 people in one charge if they continued to attack in the traditional way.
With the addition of artillery, the opponent only needs to attack Tang Mo's defense line once, and they will almost no longer have any extravagant hopes for victory. Facing Tang Mo's weapons, begging for peace was the only way out.
Theoretically, this new weapon has only one drawback, and that is that this weapon consumes too many bullets. Nowadays, it is still very difficult for Tang Mo to produce a metal fixed-loading bullet, but this kind of weapon can use up a row of spare bullets in just one minute!
Using horse-drawn carriages to supply such weapons was simply a logistical nightmare. Even with the minimum requirements, it was simply impossible to support Maxim's consumption with manpower and animal power.
So, after Tang Mo developed this weapon, he only produced a limited number of them, and did not even deploy them on a large scale for his own troops.
There is really no way, I can’t afford it! Tang Mo now is no better than Mr. Li Hongzhang who met Maxim for the first time. He is full of regrets about insufficient production capacity and cannot afford to play.
Tang Mo's limited bullet production capacity, coupled with his desperate efforts to expand the size of his logistics supply force, could only give his machine gun company the qualification to use Maxim near Bunas.
In order to make these preset almost perfect machine gun positions effective when war comes, Tang Mo even built roads leading to these machine gun positions.
These roads extend to less than 200 meters from the position, and a concealed weapons depot for temporary storage of ammunition was built at this location.
At the same time, Tang Mo also dug some trenches around these machine gun positions. After the war breaks out, he can immediately send troops into these defensive positions to cover his machine gun positions so that his machine guns can better slaughter the enemies in the front.
“Now I finally know why you don’t like lever rifles.” Staring at the third Maxim heavy machine gun that had just been assembled in front of him, Matthews spoke with awe.
He had to be in awe because he personally made this weapon that could fire continuously in a real sense.
This was his lifelong dream, but Tang Mo easily realized it. He never dreamed that the exhaust gas generated by ammunition could be used to power weapons to continuously fire!
What made him even more unexpected was that Tang Mo's automatic weapon was extremely mature even in its ammunition supply method. As long as someone kept pushing the ammunition chain to the side of the machine gun, it could fire almost without stopping.
Who else can break through the defense line guarded by this weapon? It only takes a few minutes to kill a battalion of soldiers!
Matthews even used the word massacre as a matter of course, because he felt that the troops facing such weapons were not fighting at all, but facing a massacre!
Moreover, after seeing and understanding this weapon, he immediately realized why Tang Mo kept expanding the ammunition production workshop.
Tang Mo has long known that this thing is a life-devouring monster, and also knows how big an appetite this monster has. It requires energy to swallow life, and bullets are its energy!
“The lever rifle is pretty good. At least I use it when I go hunting now.” Tang Mo said to Matthews with a smile.
In fact, Tang Mo produced many lever rifles, some equipment was given to Tang Mo's own guards, and some equipment was given to the Earl's Guards in Beiling.
Although this weapon may not be so useful on the battlefield, it is a very good weapon in close combat.
Especially in urban areas with a well-maintained environment, especially in some elite troops, there is actually no problem in using lever rifles.
"I'm not worried about Cyric anymore. I'm even a little worried about them." Matthews shook his head: "Frankly speaking, I hope they can realize their mistakes soon and stop sending so many young people away." People come here to die.”
"I hope so too." Tang Mo nodded and agreed seriously: "I also hope that when people mention Bunas in the future, they will think of a fun place instead of a cemetery for foreigners. "
He sighed, seeming to be regretting the future of Cyric's private army: "Unfortunately, the price of growth is too heavy to bear..."
(End of this chapter)