Chapter 1006 Naval Guns

After the smoke cleared and the safety whistle confirmed no danger of subsequent explosions, Lin Shenhe and Bai Yu finally poked their heads out from the bunker. Explosion accidents were nothing unusual for those in the weapons industry; cannon bore explosions were especially commonplace.

The two carefully approached the cannon's wreckage. The seventy-millimeter naval cannon had toppled over; its muzzle had been blown into a trumpet shape. Various components were twisted and mangled, presenting a pitiful sight.

"The new charge is quite powerful." Bai Yu squatted down, carefully observing the destroyed muzzle—twisted like a morning glory flower. It was difficult to imagine hard steel could be torn and warped into such a shape—this was the power of explosives.

"We just don't know if it was a fuze problem," Lin Shenhe said. Cannon bore explosions had various causes; it wasn't necessarily premature shell detonation from fuze failure. This seventy-millimeter cannon was an early product of the Metallurgy and Machinery departments, of relatively poor quality. It had been mounted on the 8154 for an extended period; after removal, it had long served as a test-firing cannon at the range. Perhaps there were cracks they hadn't discovered.

Bai Yu didn't respond. He carefully rummaged through the wreckage, then pulled on cotton yarn gloves and extracted a twisted metal component from the still-warm, steaming burst bore.

"Careful..."

"No problem—the blasting cap exploded long ago." Although Bai Yu said this, he still placed the remains carefully in a wicker basket.

It was the fuze. Though twisted beyond recognition by explosion and fire, the general result remained discernible. Detailed analysis would require careful disassembly in the laboratory.

Disassembly results proved the bore explosion had been caused by early striker firing due to spring failure. Though they had lost one rifled cannon, Lin Shenhe finally obtained the results he needed: at minimum, fuzes made with wrought iron wire could be used on low-muzzle-velocity cannons like mortars, trench mortars, and howitzers.

According to Lin Shenhe's overall plan, after the new fuze was finalized, an artillery upgrade plan should immediately commence, transitioning from the current smoothbore cannon system to rifled—at least to a muzzle-loading rifled cannon equipment system.

For this purpose, he had long since drafted several new army artillery blueprints and had the Machinery Department manufacture two experimental prototype cannons, tested in several exercises.

However, the Planning Bureau wasn't interested. With its characteristic frugality, it declared that the current smoothbore artillery equipment system had been established for less than two years; many cannons had been in service for less than twelve months. Immediate upgrading would constitute enormous waste, and accordingly refused to approve upgrading the army's existing artillery system.

Thus the new explosive shell fuze's greatest beneficiary was the Navy—currently all rifled cannons were Navy equipment. According to plan, both the 854 Modification Project and Project 901 would have all ship cannons be rifled.

Zhang Bolin was dejected. "You put in so much effort, and the Navy took all the benefits..." Although Lin Shenhe wasn't army personnel, he had at least served as a company commander for a period—counted as having eaten from the same pot as the army. So Zhang Bolin still viewed him as "one of us."

"No problem. Once Engine is complete, the time for army expansion and big cannons will naturally come." Lin Shenhe consoled him. "How about—want to go to South Sea Café for a drink tonight?"

That evening, Lin Shenhe hosted at South Sea Café, inviting Zhang Bolin, Ying Yu, Bai Yu, Xu Yingjie, and others to drink. He invited Xu Yingjie not only because they were now colleagues, but also to console a rival: Xu Yingjie's Project 0017 had suffered the same fate as the new artillery—shelved.

Picric acid trial production had been highly successful. Xu Yingjie, using phenol accumulated from coal coking production, had successfully extracted picric acid explosive through the sulfonation process. Though the sulfonation process required only nitric and sulfuric acid, production conditions weren't demanding, and yield was respectable, the Planning Bureau's comprehensive assessment concluded that immediately putting picric acid into production would require building new workshops and manufacturing complete production equipment.

"Under the current quasi-war state, we must prioritize production continuity and convenience, not rush to apply new technologies and processes." Wu De had mercilessly killed Project 0017 at the Planning Bureau meeting, declaring it "technical reserve" to be mass-produced when "the time is ripe."

From the beginning, Lin Shenhe had foreseen this outcome. Though high-density black powder definitely couldn't match picric acid in performance, it won overwhelmingly on low cost. What choice the notoriously penny-pinching Planning Bureau would make was self-evident.

Everyone drank recklessly at the café. Half-drunk, Lin Shenhe quietly settled the bill and slipped out.

"Sorry, Old Xu. And Bolin." Lin Shenhe murmured. What he was about to do would definitely make Zhang Bolin even more unhappy if he knew—tomorrow morning he had to install cannons on the Navy's new warship. Zhou Ke, project leader of the First Shipbuilding Outfitting Plan, had invited him to inspect on-site tonight.

Lin Shenhe returned to his apartment. Shenye had already prepared his mountain bike—issued for Senators' personal use. Though many preferred the twenty-eight-inch Flying Pigeon, Lin Shenhe favored the more comfortable mountain bike.

"Be careful on the road." With his sister's admonition, Lin Shenhe quickly pedaled onto the road to Bopu. The night train to Bopu didn't run unless one wanted to risk riding freight cars. The road had gas street lamps, though quite sparsely placed—barely sufficient to discern the road surface. But the scattered lights at least marked road boundaries, preventing wrong turns on moonless nights.

The mountain bike had a self-generating light. Lin Shenhe relied on this lamp to confidently speed along the road—of course, there wouldn't be any pedestrians or vehicles on this route at this hour. And the entire area along the way had been upgraded to Green Zone; Senators traveling alone faced no danger.

On summer nights, with cool breezes, riding on the road was quite comfortable—except the lamp attracted swarms of insects that circled his bicycle endlessly, annoying him to no end.

To arrive quickly, Lin Shenhe didn't enter Bopu Town but took a side road directly to the naval base.

After passing sentry inspection and riding another ten minutes, the silhouette of Project 854 Modification finally materialized before him.

The 1630-class iron-ribbed wooden-hulled clipper-bow steam-auxiliary sail cruiser wasn't a vast warship. Its standard displacement was only 1,160 tons, seventy meters long, 9.9 meters wide. In the old dimension, even eighteenth-century fourth-rate ships of the line possessed greater displacement. But in this dimension, it was genuinely a colossus. Though some thousand-ton vessels had appeared as early as the fifteenth century, they were few and rarely seen at sea. When the hull was launched in Lingao, it had attracted many commoners to watch—though they were accustomed to seeing ten-thousand-ton iron ships, a super-huge vessel being constructed right before their eyes remained quite dramatic.

The hull, painted dark black, now lay quietly moored at Bopu Naval Pier. Outfitting was essentially complete—only the final deck cannon installation remained.

On the pier before the hull, a temporary work shed was brightly lit. Under brilliant gas lamps, Senator engineers led by Zhou Ke, who was responsible for shipbuilding affairs, gathered to discuss the 1630-class's final outfitting implementation plan.

The 854 Modification's cannon layout scheme completely abandoned multi-deck gun positions. Though many were fascinated by the spectacular scene of dozens of cannons firing in sequence on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ships of the line, for the structure of Lingao-manufactured hybrid-powered warships, such gun positioning was unsuitable. Moreover, with the Senate's technological capability and industrial level, there was no need to replicate ships of the line.

The 1630-class completely abandoned multi-deck gun positions below deck, switching entirely to deck-mounted cannons. Sailing warships had high centers of gravity; placing cannons below deck served to stabilize the center of gravity. Now the weight of steam engines, boilers, and coal bunkers could fully serve the stabilizing function that below-deck cannons once provided.

Since cannons were placed on deck, their numbers wouldn't be too numerous. Cannon power had to be sufficient not only to handle the largest European vessels in naval combat with rapid firing rate, but also to address future needs for shore bombardment supporting army operations.

To meet such requirements, the various smoothbore cannons currently equipped on naval vessels—from twelve-pounder cannons to thirty-two-pounder carronades, including the current heaviest naval shipboard sixty-eight-pounder carronade—were all inadequate. Adopting rifled cannons was the ideal choice.

Rifled cannons possessed many advantages. Besides high firing accuracy and strong shell penetration from high muzzle velocity, they were also light and used less propellant. This was extremely attractive to the famously frugal Planning Bureau and Executive Committee.

As the reactionary academic authority on old-style artillery, the cannon configuration scheme Lin Shenhe proposed was to use Dahlgren rifled cannons with Minié-type shells. This was a muzzle-loading rifled cannon. Its distinctive feature was dramatic variation in the barrel—thin toward the front, expanding dramatically near the bore, shaped like a wine bottle, hence also called "bottle cannon."

The choice of muzzle-loading was deliberate, avoiding the complex gas-sealing component machining problems of breech-loaders. Compared to the Armstrong-type cannon the machinery factory had once manufactured, Dahlgren cannons were cast using the Rodman method—a relatively simple production process that could utilize cast iron. Material costs and labor hours were considerably more economical than Armstrong-type cannons. Dahlgren cannons cast using the Rodman method could be made very large. Americans had manufactured and used these cannons extensively during and after the Civil War, some with calibers reaching sixteen inches.

(End of Chapter)