Chapter 11 Section 3 Explosive Firearms

This type of firearm is an iron-shell explosive firearm developed on the basis of a paper-shell fireball. There are early artillery pieces to counter the mines, sea mines and various explosive bombs created in the Ming Dynasty. This is an iron-shelled fireball created by the Jin Army from the end of the 12th century to the beginning of the 13th century.Its creation has an interesting story.It is said that in the 29th year of Jin Dading (the 16th year of Chunxi in the Southern Song Dynasty, 1189 A.D.), in Beizheng Village, Shanxi Yangqu (now Taiyuan, Shanxi), where the Jin army occupied, there was a fox catcher Tie Li. A pottery pot with a big mouth and belly is filled with a lot of gunpowder, and the fire wire is connected to the outside. Then, the gunpowder pot is placed in the place where the foxes come and go. When the foxes approach, the gunpowder pot is ignited. Li's preset snare.Tie Li hacked them to death with an ax and returned with a full load.Inspired by this, the Jin Army created an explosive fireball with an iron shell for use in combat.In the 14th year of Jiading in the Southern Song Dynasty (1221 A.D.), the Jin army attacked Qizhou (now Qichun, Hubei) with iron artillery.Li Chengzhi, the prefect of Qizhou, and Zhao Yu, the manager?Lead the Ministry to stick to it.When besieging the city, the Jin army lined up catapults outside the city and threw iron cannons into the city; when they hit the top of the city, the Song army defending the city died immediately after being shot, and some soldiers had their heads and faces cut off in half; When the city tower was hit, the tower was destroyed; when the residents were hit, the residents suffered a lot of casualties.After 25 days of siege, the Jin army occupied Qizhou.Li Chengzhi's whole family and Liao Zuo were all killed, and Zhao Yu's (Xia x Xiaai) family of 15 people also died in the disaster of war.

After the Jin army successfully captured Qizhou with iron artillery, it successfully defended Kaifeng with iron artillery in the first year of Jin Tianxing (1232 A.D.).Back then, the Mongolian army marched on Kaifeng after repeatedly defeating the Jin army.During the siege, the Mongolian army surrounded the city for 150 miles. They used trebuchets to throw stone bombs and fireballs on the city.In order to break through the cowhide hole of the Mongolian army, the Jin army suspended a large iron cannon from the city with iron cables to shake the sky. After igniting the fire wire, it was hung along the city wall to explode at the place where the Mongolian army dug the city.As a result, the cowhide caves of the Mongolian army were blown to pieces, and the blood and flesh of the Mongolian army who dug the city were flying everywhere.The Mongolian army withdrew from the siege because they saw that they could not make a strong attack.

By the end of the Song Dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, both Song and Mongolia had improved and developed iron cannons, which not only increased their power, but also increased their types. According to literature records, there are mainly four types: bowl type, iron can type, gourd type, and ball type (see Figure 18). These iron artillery shells are all made of iron, and the fire wires pass through the small holes. After ignition and explosion, the fragments of the iron shells fly in all directions, killing and wounding the enemy's troops and destroying the enemy's war equipment.The Mongolian (Yuan) army also used iron artillery when they fought against the Japanese army twice in the 11th year of Zhiyuan (AD 1274) and the 18th year.According to the Japanese document "Hachiman Foolish Children's Training", when the Mongolian army landed in Japan for the first time, it used iron artillery.When the iron cannon exploded in the Japanese army, it was seen that "the flames were shining and the sound was thunderous, destroying the liver and gallbladder, making people dizzy and deaf, and at a loss what to do." "Taiping Ji" said: "After the Mongolian army beat the drums, the weapons joined each other, and they threw spherical iron cannons down the hillside, shaped like wheels, the sound shook like thunderbolts, and the light flashed like thunder and lightning. There are many people, and the warehouse on the city is on fire, which should have been extinguished, but there is no time to take care of it."From then on, the Japanese knew that firearms had been used in the world.

After improvement and development, iron artillery expanded its use, and in the late Ming Dynasty, it was made into mines, mines and bombs, which were used in land and water warfare. Landmines are explosive firearms buried in the ground. The earliest recorded landmines are from the 25th to 28th years of Jiajing in the Ming Dynasty (AD 1546-1549). made by the organization.Soon, other generals also competed to make and use it.When Qi Jiguang, a famous anti-Japanese general, guarded the eastern Great Wall, he also manufactured a large number of landmines and deployed them in the main passes or ambush areas to strengthen the defense.By the Wanli period, all kinds of landmines came out one after another, and more than 10 kinds were recorded in "Wu Bei Zhi" alone.Thunder shell materials include iron, stone and ceramics.The detonation methods include stepping, tripping, pulling, pointing, timed triggering, and the mechanical detonating device "steel wheel ignition" created by Qi Jiguang's department.The main products are blasting cannons, skyrocketing mines, invincible mine cannons and ten thousand bomb mine cannons and so on.

Explosive guns (see Figure 19) are mines made of pig iron, the size of a bowl, and there is a charging hole on the shell surface. .When in use, the fire wires of several bombers are often connected in series and connected to the fire pit of a mechanical trigger ignition device "steel wheel fire", and then a long line is passed through the steel wheel fire device, and then the enemy must pass through. The road was dug and buried.If the enemy steps on the long line and pulls the steel wheel ignition device, it will ignite and explode.Similar to bombing guns are self-inflicted guns and 10,000-bomb mine guns.

Voldemort is a mine that is detonated with fire.The tinder is placed in the pot and placed on the thunder shell, and the fire wire from the mine is always connected to the pot, close to the tinder.Several long-handled guns and knives were erected on the surface of the basin, and then covered with soil.When the enemy soldiers passed by and drew their long-handled guns and knives, the tinder in the basin fell on the line of fire, detonating the mines. The invincible mine cannon is a spherical iron-shell landmine that is ignited and detonated. The big one is filled with a bucket of gunpowder, and the small one is filled with three to five liters of gunpowder. Bury landmines on the road that the enemy must pass, and expose the mouth of the bamboo pole to your side.When the enemy entered the minefield, the soldiers lit the line of fire and detonated the mines.

The shell of the 10,000-ball mine cannon is like a jar with gunpowder inside, and the mouth of the mine is filled with soil, leaving a small hole through which the fire wire passes.Before use, bury the mine body on the only way for the enemy to pass, and at the same time bury a steel wheel lighter, connect it with the fire wire drawn from the mouth of the altar, cover it with soil and pebbles, and install a steel wheel lighter on the ground. Connected tripwire.When the enemy soldiers and horses touch the steel wheel to ignite, it will trigger the ignition machine, detonate the mines, and the mud and pebbles will fly around, killing the enemy soldiers and horses.

Sea mines are penetrating or explosive firearms placed in water. They were created during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty. The products include underwater mines, underwater dragon king guns, and Jiji mines. Underwater mines are the earliest penetration mines.Tang Shunzhi, the censor of the right capital of the Ming Dynasty, recorded in "Wu Bian·Firearms" that this kind of water mine was placed in a wooden box with a fire blunderbuss called the General, and the seams were glued with putty. Use three iron drills to drop it, and ambush it in various ports.If the enemy ship approaches and touches its machine, the firecracker will shoot out the projectile and sink the enemy ship.

The underwater dragon king cannon is a kind of mine that is detonated at a fixed time. The shell is made of pig iron and weighs about four to six catties. It contains five to ten liters of gunpowder. A letter is inserted into the mouth of the mine. The anti-seepage floating bag is made, and the top of the floating bag uses a slender sheep intestine as a tube for entering the air, and leads to the floating raft made of goose and goose feathers on the water surface, so that the incense will not be suffocated.The mine is fixed on the wooden raft, and it is dropped into the water with stones and suspended.The length of the incense used should be determined according to the speed of the water flow in the battle section and the distance from the enemy.Before the battle, the incense is usually ignited at night, and then floated downstream. When it touches the enemy ship, the incense burns, the mine explodes, and the enemy ship sinks.The Underwater Dragon King Cannon not only has high requirements for the production of mine bodies, but also uses good quality slow-burning incense, designed clever ventilation pipes, and considered the flow rate of river water. It is the crystallization of the ingenuity of mine developers in the late Ming Dynasty.

Jiji Lei is a kind of iron-cast blunderbuss-shaped mine.The body of the mine is one foot and five inches long, four inches in diameter, and contains two catties of gunpowder and a lead bullet weighing two catties.Take a slow-burning powder letter from the propellant to the outside of the mine, twist it on the mine body, seal the mouth of the mine with yellow wax, and then nail the mine to the bottom of the enemy ship.Generally, it takes eight mines to penetrate a ship.When used, sailors with higher diving skills nailed them evenly to the bottom of the enemy ship.When nailing mines, the gunpowder is ignited and the gunpowder is ignited at the same time, and the sailors quickly move away from the enemy ship.After that, the large lead bullets in the blunderbuss were shot out, directly piercing the bottom of the enemy ship and sinking it.

The bombs mentioned here are not bombs dropped by planes today, but explosive bombs made of stone and iron in ancient times, mainly including stone cannons, ten thousand enemies and pomegranate guns. Stone cannons are generally made by digging pits on oval stones, filling the pits with gunpowder, inserting a reed tube into the gunpowder, passing the fire wire through it, and then compacting and sealing it.Stone cannons are cheap to make and more lethal.In the late Ming Dynasty, stones were often taken from nearby along the Great Wall, stored near the crenels, and killed by bombing the invading enemies.If readers are lucky enough to visit Shanhaiguan, they must go to the weapon showroom on the city tower to see the large and small stone cannons made and used by the Ming army. Wandi is a kind of hand-thrown bomb created in the late Ming Dynasty, which is specially used by soldiers defending the city.Its production method is to make a hollow spherical shell with wet mud, fill the shell with toxic and flammable gunpowder after drying, and pass the fire wire through it, and then put it into a wooden frame or barrel to prevent it from breaking .When the enemy army came to attack the city, the soldiers defending the city would light the fire wire, throw it down the city and explode it, poisoning and burning the enemy army attacking the city. The pomegranate gun is a bomb made of pig iron.Shaped like a pomegranate, it was about the size of a bowl and acted like a modern hand grenade.A hole is left on the cartridge case to fill the case with toxic gunpowder and smoke.When charging the medicine, only fill six-tenths of it first, and then put a wine glass in it, and put a kindling that can ignite the fire in the glass.Then plug the muzzle with an iron cover, and paint the shell with camouflage.When in use, either throw it into the enemy's formation and explode it; or put it on the side of the road, let the enemy's soldiers and horses step on it, so that the fire in the cannon is shocked and ignites, causing an explosion.Because the gunpowder is filled with poisonous gunpowder, the enemy is poisoned, the throat and eyes are poisoned, and the ability to fight is lost.