Daming pirates

These sloops are his next weapon to use against the Spanish fleet. They must form an army before the Spanish fleet comes to Taipei, so that the Sea Wolf can gain the initiative in the sea battle.

Therefore, the opinions of Liu Yidao and others were more in line with his thoughts, so after discussing with everyone, Yu Xiaotian decided to strike first this time, and take advantage of the battle that they had assembled before the official army started to launch.

Killing the fleet of ships directly disrupted the government's plan.

As for Yu Xiaotian's idea, Comrade Lin Yiyang, Lin Da's staff officer who had just been recalled from Tamsui City, also agreed.

Lin Yiyang and Yu Xiaotian also had the same ideas when it came to dealing with the army. Although Lin Yiyang didn't know that Yu Xiaotian would be preparing to fight the Spanish next year, as a scholar of the Ming Dynasty, Lin Yiyang still had to a certain extent.

I don’t want Yu Xiaotian to go too fast or too far on the road of rebellion.

But he was not opposed to repairing the Fujian army and letting the newly appointed Fujian governor Zhu Qinxiang suffer. However, he also hoped that the damage to the officers and soldiers in this battle could be controlled within the scope acceptable to the government and the court, otherwise

This may cause the imperial court to be furious and assemble officers, soldiers and warships from various southern provinces to deal with Sea Wolf. In that case, Sea Wolf will have a lively life in the future.

Although the Ming Dynasty is now in decline and surrounded by many dangers, after all, a skinny camel is bigger than a horse. If it gets really angry, it is not impossible to mobilize an army of 100,000 to 80,000. Once the court wants to do it,

The resources that can be mobilized for such a thing are probably beyond their imagination. Once the boathouses along the coasts of Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong and Guangxi are ordered to start building warships, they may not even be able to build thousands of them a year.

No matter how strong the Sea Wolf is, it cannot withstand such a large number of fleets and troops.

In addition, there are currently hostile forces such as Chu Cai Lao and others in the surrounding area, who have been eyeing the Sea Wolf. If the government takes action against the Sea Wolf, these guys will definitely take the opportunity to beat up the drowned dog in the future and keep the Sea Wolf to death. Only then did they

It would be fun, and after killing Hailang and Yu Xiaotian, the Fujian coast would become their world, which would be of real benefit to them.

Therefore, for various reasons, Lin Yiyang also strongly agreed to control the conflict between the Sea Wolf and the Fujian officers and soldiers within a certain range. It was necessary to hurt the Fujian officials, but not to make the matter too big and cause the sea wolves to suffer.

The wolf must leave some room for maneuver in the future.

So after everyone's discussion, a combat plan gradually took shape, and was finally finalized by Yu Xiaotian.

Within a year, Sea Wolf will have to fight two big battles. The first time is against the Chu Cai Lao Group, which is his colleague, and the second time is against the current government and army. For Sea Wolf, the pressure is really not small.

However, fortunately, Yu Xiaotian started to explode the industry on Nanyue Island early in the morning. Now Sea Wolf's industrial foundation is quite good, making Sea Wolf Group basically achieve self-production and self-sufficiency in weapons.

Although Sea Wolf has basically stopped the production of cold weapons and instead purchased them secretly from land, it has not had a big impact on Sea Wolf. This kind of underground transaction can basically meet Sea Wolf's demand for cold weapons.

, but it freed up more craftsmen to invest in the production of firearms, greatly increasing the production volume of Sea Wolf firearms.

Nowadays, excluding the artillery guns produced in the factories in Tamsui and Jilong, Nanyue Island's gunsmiths and gunsmiths alone can produce nearly thirty or forty artillery pieces of various types every month.

Among them, the production of six-pounder guns has been gradually reduced, and production of a 12-pounder short-barreled gun has begun.

This twelve-pound short cannon is much shorter than the previous twelve-pound cannon. Although this reduces the effective range of the cannon, it greatly reduces the weight of the cannon and makes it more compact.

The weight of the cannon has been reduced to between 500 and 600 kilograms, so that it can be easily equipped on most warships currently owned by Sea Wolf.

This twelve-pound short gun is actually a mountain howitzer. Its direct range is only two to three hundred meters. The longest range of solid bullets is only about one thousand meters. The effective range is only about three hundred meters. After three hundred meters, the accuracy

It is basically uncontrollable. When used on land, it can hit farther, but if you want to hit an enemy ship at sea, you can basically only hit it within 200 meters.

But this does not have a great impact on the Sea Wolf fleet, because even if they are equipped with twelve-pound long guns on their ships, the effective range can reach 500 meters, but in a naval battle, such long-range firepower

The advantage can only be reflected in the bombardment of the opposite shore. In actual naval battles, this range advantage cannot be effectively used most of the time.

This is also the reason why in the era of sailing warships, many naval battles were controlled at a combat distance of about 200 meters. The reason why the warships of both sides even came face to face to within 100 meters before they started to bombard each other was because of the naval guns of this era.

Without a stabilizing device, it would be difficult to ensure shooting accuracy at a slightly greater distance.

Therefore, Yu Xiaotian felt that the twelve-pound naval guns and twelve-pound cannons produced before were a bit useless. Most of the time, they could not give full play to their combat advantages. They only increased the weight of the cannon and increased the cost. In addition, the long-barreled cannon

It is also difficult to arrange on the ship. It can only be installed on the deck of the ship and used as a swivel gun. It is also relatively difficult to reload and push the cannon back into position.

Because of its weight, it cannot be equipped on some smaller warships. It can only be installed on larger ships with about 300 materials, and the hull needs to be reinforced.

The six-pound cannon that was commonly equipped on warships before Sea Wolf, after such a long period of trial, is far more powerful than the shabby cannon used by its peers, but after all, the six-pound cannon's projectile quality is limited. In naval battles, it is often

It can only open relatively small holes in the enemy ship and cannot easily destroy the structure of the enemy ship. It often requires a lot of firepower to be concentrated and repeated fire on an enemy ship. It takes a lot of shells to completely destroy the enemy ship.

If it is used to deal with rough-skinned and thick-skinned Western-style sailing ships, then the six-pounder cannon shells hitting these Western-style sailing ships will not even be able to guarantee penetration in many cases, and will not be able to effectively destroy the enemy ships.

Therefore, weapons like the six-pounder gun were useless in Xiaotian's eyes. There was no need to continue to increase production. Soldiers could not equip them, but the navy thought it was not powerful enough.

Therefore, after some consideration, Yu Xiaotian ordered the artillery manufacturer to develop a new gun model and specially trial-produced this short-barreled twelve-pound mountain howitzer.

This new twelve-pound short cannon has a barrel length-to-diameter ratio compressed to about ten times, making this short cannon look very short and somewhat unattractive. Moreover, the barrel wall is also smaller than the previous twelve-pound cannon.

It is a little thinner and the charge is slightly reduced, but the weight of the gun is greatly reduced, making it similar to the weight of the previous six-pound gun, but the power at close range is doubled.

Even in a naval battle, as long as the effective range is within 200 meters, the damage it can cause to enemy ships is far greater than that of a six-pounder gun with a longer barrel.

What's more important is that after such a long period of cannon casting, Pao Zuo and Yu Xiaotian themselves have accumulated quite a wealth of experience. The iron mold casting method has greatly reduced the difficulty of cannon casting and greatly improved the yield of cannon casting.

, giving Seawolf the advantage of casting cannons at any time throughout the year.

But after all, when the iron mold casting method is used to cast the gun, there is still a situation where the outside of the casting body cools faster than the inside, forming a certain difference in internal and external pressure, causing the outer layer of the outer layer to cool faster than the inner wall of the barrel to cool slowly, making the

The hardness of the inner bore, which is stronger, is not as hard as the outer wall of the gun body. As a result, defective products will still be produced to a certain extent and can only be scrapped.

There are still certain flaws in the iron cannon casting method, which makes the yield rate of cannon casting hover between 70% and 80%, which cannot be improved. Moreover, there are also heavy cannons with larger calibers, because the cannons

The cooling rates of the inner and outer walls of the tube are different, and the cooling rate of the outer wall exceeds that of the inner wall, resulting in a higher rejection rate of the cast cannon.

This is probably why when the Ming Dynasty purchased the Hongyi cannon, one cannon cost more than a thousand taels of silver. In fact, the casting cost of a Hongyi cannon was not too high, even if the cannon casting method was used.

The casting cost of an eighteen-pound cannon will not exceed one hundred and fifty taels of silver.

But when the Portuguese sold the cannon to the Ming Dynasty, an 18-pound cannon was sold for more than a thousand taels of silver. If we look at the cost, this must also include the scrap rate, freight and profit.

All have to be added to the price. In addition, in this era, Westerners have not yet invented the iron mold casting method, and they also use the clay mold casting method to cast cannons. As a result, when the artillery is being cast, the scrap rate remains high.

There are many iron cannon-casting methods that surpass those of Sea Wolf, which is why the price of Hongyi cannon imported by Ming Dynasty is very high.

Even so, when the Portuguese sold these 18-pound cannons to the Ming Dynasty, they were already very cheap, because these cannons were not cast by the Portuguese themselves at all, but simply from a British shipwreck in the sea around Macau.

It was salvaged from the sea, that's why it was sold so cheaply.

It is said that the price of the five 18-pound cannons purchased by Mr. Chu Cai from the Portuguese was more than 3,000 taels per gun. That is quite black!

It is for these reasons that in order to ensure the solidity of the gun body, the gunsmith had no choice but to increase the strength of the gun barrel at the expense of increasing the thickness of the gun wall. This also brought about the disadvantage of increased weight of the gun.

At the same time, it also increases the scrap rate, forming a vicious cycle.

For Yu Xiaotian, who also encountered this problem, during this period of his busy schedule, he has been thinking about how to continue to improve the quality and yield of the cannon. While ensuring the power of the cannon, he also found ways to

Reduce the weight of some cannons and fundamentally solve the problem of the scrap rate of cast cannons.

(Continue to ask for monthly votes! Thank you to the brothers who have already voted for the support! Thank you Hanfeng!)