Seeing that summer was about to end, these three months of fall were his final preparation time. Besides resisting the invasion of the demonic beasts from the West, he had also had to keep an eye on Timothy and the Church who might come from the Eastern side. Unlike last year where he had to pull on his lapels exposing the elbows, Border Town’s population and income nowadays had gone through a substantial growth. They had also gradually increased the iron production, and with the help of more than a dozen witches, he was sure that he would be able to turn the Western Territory into an impassable iron bastion.
Based on to the previous year’s combat experience, the greatest threat to the wall was without a doubt the mixed demonic beasts. Especially so when the enemy had a thick crust, which would be hard to wear down using bullets, and thus could only be killed by explosion at a close proximity, or by sending witches out of the city. However, no matter what kind of countermeasure he used, they both held high risks.
Also, until now he had only faced attacks from the enemy’s cavalry or infantry, so he had never seen this era’s siege weaponry. If the other side could construct a torsion catapult, or the more advanced counterweight trebuchets, he feared that he would encounter a lot of trouble. After all, the process of loading a cannon so that it could fire was very inconvenient. Not only did they have to to raise the cannon chamber each time they loaded, it was also easy for the cannon ball to roll out of it.
These circumstances all meant it was inevitable that he would have to develop a new cannon.
After thoughtfully thinking about it, Roland began to list all of the requirements he had onto a piece of paper.
First of all, it had to have a sufficient shooting distance and force; enough that it could break through the shell of a mixed species that was a thousand meters away. Secondly, it had to be rear loaded, this way the head could freely be lowered or raised, while still preserving its ability to shoot quickly. Finally, in order to reduce the time of repeated research and development, the cannon should also be designed to fulfill several purposes. Meaning that in addition to being used to defend a stronghold and suppress the enemy, it could also be directly pulled onto a ship and be employed as the major weapon for future heavy gunboats.
Because of this it would have to be a large caliber with a long barrel type of heavy artillery.
Roland first thought of those 15–16 cun (2.5cm) huge monsters that were used on battleships, with a range of several scores of kilometers, and powerful enough for a shot to dig several meters deep into the ground, only to quickly reject an unrealistic idea such as this. Although there shouldn’t be any problem on the processing side, but with Border Town’s current level of materials, it meant that at least nine out of ten cannons would be explode. And if he thickened the cannon’s wall to more than one meter, they would lose their practical value since he would be no longer able to move them.
By now he could only give birth to high-purity wrought iron that had the performance of ordinary steel. So the plan still had to be on the conservative side.
Roland finally set the caliber to the sacred number of 152 millimeters.
The cannon used a vertical wedge breechblock, which was upwards and downwards sliding door..When it was pulled down it exposed the cannon’s chamber, and after loading it with an artillery shell, the block could be moved back up to completely lock the rear, so that the gunpowder could only erupt forward. Compared to a spiral breechblock and horizontal wedge breechblock, its speed was faster, and its principle was also very simple and was a blueprint he already knew by heart.
However, if he wanted to implement rapid firing, the artillery had to be equipped with a recoil mechanism, which in simple terms resembled two bicycle pumps, one that was filled with a padding of oil and the other with a spring or gas. Due to the recoil the muzzle would press against the two tubes, and would simultaneously compress the oil and the spring. The oil was used to buffer the recoil, while the spring would store the power and push the canon back into its original position after the shell left.
Lastly the shell.
