Chapter 357 (2/2)

From Ashes’ and Anderlia’s looks, one could tell that the Longsong Cannon was something that they could not possibly imagine.

It was nice to have such an ally, but as a brother, she felt he was even more distant.

She even had a feeling that Roland had gone far ahead of her.

This made Tilly a little frustrated.

If only he could be more frank.

…

Seeing the shells that were produced with great difficulty exhaust in a blink, Roland felt his heart was aching. In spite of this, he still had to put on an inscrutable look to cover up his unwillingness.

This was not a new cannon testing in a real sense.

In order to achieve a brilliant demo effect, he asked Iron Axe to borrow a group of elite artillery from the artillery battalion and had them start on simulative shooting practice a few days beforehand, during which they also carried out two rounds of ball firing practice. This was nothing but a force demonstration specially prepared for the witches.

The shooting went on well, and the result was also excellent—at least from Agatha’s shocked look, one could tell that the performance of the cannons had blown her mind.

Nonetheless, to Roland, the firing performance of this Longsong Cannon was far from ideal.

Except for the sacred caliber of 152 mm, the rest of it was not even close to that of the real 152. With Anna’s ability in precision machining, Lucia’s in element purification and Sylvie’s in crack detection, theoretically, he could manufacture modern cannons in a real sense, rather than a replica that only had a shooting range of seven to eight kilometers.

The key lay in details.

For now, it appeared that the setting of its chamber was too small.

In consideration of the weight of fixed ammunition, Roland decreased the volume of the chamber on purpose, which resulted in insufficiency in powder charge. Although it had a long barrel of 40 caliber, its shooting range was still unsatisfactory.

Another thing was propellant.

Since nitroglycerin was still in the process of testing, all that was loaded to the cannons was nitrocotton. This was also a reason why Roland felt it was a pity that the nitrocotton consumed by a few shells was enough to load thousands of bullets. In addition, these smokeless propellants had not been gelatinized, which further decreased the powder charge.

Finally, the shell itself was after all a larger version of the bullet. If the bullet had not been charged, it all relied on kinetic energy to create lethality. Missing the target meant zero harm. At this stage it could only be used to attack some slow enemies.

Overall, there was still a long way to go before they were able to barrage and cover every inch of the earth with cannon shells.

However, Roland felt he probably did not have as much time as he initially expected.

Ever since he knew that the transformation of the Magic Stone was originated from demons, he felt increasingly alert deep down inside.

“If demons also had their own scientific technologies, would they enjoy an advance by leaps and bounds in these technologies at some point?”