Chương 162: Anti-Aircraft Artillery

"I hope to be equipped with a small cannon with an effective range of around 600 meters, which can be operated and fired by a single person even if all other crew members are killed. This kind of cannon should preferably be light enough to be pulled by a single mount spider, and capable of rapidly switching between firing mode and travel mode." Gob-Run spoke with fluent confidence, seated in his chair with a pair of metallic iron legs attached to his lower body.

Those iron legs had been forged out of sheet metal for him by Li Qinwu; they had no actual practical function and served merely as a psychological comfort. Li Qinwu understood his concept clearly. Gob-Run wanted a small, harassment-type cannon with a range longer than a musket, allowing him to pull it with mount spiders to roughly 600 meters from the enemy line to conduct artillery bombardments.

It would primarily serve to strike at enemy morale—after all, a large-caliber solid shot hitting the enemy could easily crush two or three men, and at close range, it could even fire canister shot, whereas a small cannon lacked that kind of lethal destruction. Li Qinwu nodded, agreeing to develop this small cannon. Granting the cavalry an additional means of firepower delivery without sacrificing too much mobility was definitely a promising idea. He turned his gaze toward the other military officers.

"Do any of you have thoughts regarding equipment?" The officers spoke up one by one, offering their insights. There wasn't much new—mostly the same old topics of long bayonets, as well as damp gunpowder and flintlock ignition failures. The continuous rain over the past few days had finally stopped, though light showers still occurred occasionally. Once ammunition was pulled from the ammo boxes, if it wasn't completely used up that day, it would become damp.

As for flintlock ignition failures, all flintlocks suffered from this issue—a 10% to 20% chance of failing to spark. Flint-striking ignition simply possessed immense instability. Gob-Spear reported that a soldier under his command possessed godly luck—during a line volley against the enemy, his musket had failed to spark three consecutive times. This kind of weapon that couldn't fire with a 100% success rate was extremely unreliable.

Especially when hundreds or thousands of men were equipped with them, the number of unfired muskets became far too high, representing a severe waste of firepower. The historical solution of later eras was to use percussion caps to replace flintlock mechanisms, which drastically boosted firearm reliability. However, Li Qinwu's chemical capabilities were virtually zero; he couldn't manufacture percussion caps at all unless he had a certain team of 500 wretches work for him for two years.

Problems that couldn't be solved had to be set aside for now, while strengthening the regiment's firearm and ammunition management, requiring that any ammunition unsealed on a given day must be expended before nightfall. In addition, back in the era of the old 10th Company of the Disciplinary Corps, hadn't someone failed to withstand the rigorous training and shot an officer?

These issues could be combined and addressed together, implementing a strict separation system between firearms and ammunition across the army. At that time, not knowing when the Hero Leon would arrive, Li Qinwu had demanded that the soldiers carry ammunition on them at all times for fear that the troops wouldn't have time to react. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Now that the situation was no longer as critical, they could step up army management enforcement. Afterward, Gob-Bow added that he wanted better sniper weaponry, whereupon the meeting concluded. The commanders of each unit disbanded, returning to lead their respective troops. Among them, Gob-Run's cavalry headed west to conduct patrol and reconnaissance, hoping to detect enemy flight vessels in advance to provide early warning.

For a long period following that, Li Qinwu stayed in the industrial zone developing new weaponry. Regarding the anti-aircraft artillery, there was actually no real difficulty. Flight vessels flew slowly, were huge in size, and possessed leather exteriors with virtually no defensive protection; as long as a shell could be sent up to strike the flight vessel, that was all that mattered.

Li Qinwu adopted a small 40mm caliber barrel coupled with a large chamber, using the same amount of propellant per shot as a standard artillery piece. The cannon barrel wasn't difficult; what was difficult was designing the gun carriage. This kind of anti-aircraft cannon definitely needed the capability for vertical strikes targeting 90 degrees straight up into the sky, which posed a major challenge to the mount.

Because of the aiming angles of regular artillery, recoil was easily transmitted down into the ground, or the cannon would roll backward upon firing, which also canceled out a lot of the recoil force. However, if the barrel was elevated high into the air, recoil couldn't be canceled out through backward rolling, making it extremely likely to flip over after a single shot. To address this, Li Qinwu spent nearly a week experimenting while designing, finally forging a barely usable mass of a gun carriage.

It was a massive iron block consisting of a round disc base with two iron pillars inserted into it, between which the anti-aircraft cannon was mounted. This base allowed the cannon to aim vertically up to 90 degrees, but offered no way to aim left or right. Adding an elevation mechanism was already extremely complex, making it impossible to incorporate traverse adjustments. Wanting to aim left or right required at least six people working together to lift the gun carriage and physically move it sideways.

For this single cannon, the carriage weight alone exceeded 300 kilograms—heavier than the cannon itself—totaling just over 500 kilograms. Its aiming was exceedingly slow, making it virtually capable of attacking only stationary targets, while possessing almost zero mobility. Even though Li Qinwu installed four wheels on its base, pulling the cannon into motion still required the deployment of Earth Dragons or ogres.

Once the cannon was finished, Li Qinwu also designed conical-headed shells, casting an elongated conical projectile and using a lathe to trim the edges. Conical-headed shells offered better wind resistance than primitive round cannonballs, flying farther and maintaining a flatter trajectory. He had actually wanted to jump straight to spitzer bullets, but machining that sharp point was quite difficult.

The enemy would arrive very soon, so Li Qinwu had no time to spare on extensive research; he had to expand production immediately, settling for conical-headed shells. The anti-aircraft cannon offered only a single chance to fire. Its barrel was 2 meters long, and combined with the chamber and the carriage height, loading meant shoving ammunition into a nearly 3-meter-long assembly.

Needless to say how difficult it was for a person to load a 3-meter-long object; furthermore, for this small 40mm anti-aircraft tube, one had to stuff in almost as much propellant as a 90mm cannon. The powder-loading process alone took dozens of seconds. In short, this was a helpless compromise of a weapon. Under low-tech conditions, Li Qinwu had created this emergency stopgap at the cost of sacrificing mobility and reloading speed.

However, credit where credit was due: the thing could still achieve its design purpose. In a direct-fire flat trajectory, the anti-aircraft cannon could hit a 5-meter by 5-meter concrete target at a distance of 1, 500 meters. As long as they could predict the flight vessel's forward position and point the anti-aircraft cannon at its trajectory in advance, even a cumbersome anti-aircraft cannon could hit a gargantuan flight vessel. Li Qinwu issued an order to Iron-Orc: "Initiate production immediately!

Put all capacity into manufacturing this type of cannon!" Iron-Orc nodded.

"Your Majesty, I will assemble all personnel for production right away. It is estimated that we can produce 3 pieces of this cannon within a month." Li Qinwu nodded; 3 pieces plus this one made a total of 4, which was already enough. He summoned Gob-Explode over, having his artillerymen take over the first anti-aircraft cannon to immediately begin gun-handling drills.