Anyone who has watched some war movies knows such a **: bury an oil drum in the ground, and then constantly fire explosive packs, and the powerful power makes the enemy fearful and becomes an invincible existence in battle.
Especially in the two movies "Assembly Number" and "Outwitting Tiger Mountain", the power of this ** has been shown to the extreme.
In film and television dramas and some time-traveling, there is a kind of ** that dominates the era of cold weapons, and its power is strong enough to dominate the world. This kind of ** is known as the "conscienceless cannon" of the flying thunder barrel, even today, there are many people who talk about it.
Although the earliest user of the "conscienceless cannon" is no longer verifiable, it was widely used in the Liberation War, and it is said that its inventor was Nie Peizhang, the commander of an engineering company from the Northeast Army.
As for how he invented this **, there is not much explanation at the moment, it may be that he groped it out in battle and generalized it to the whole army.
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, despite the victory of our army, the lack of a large-scale siege** made it difficult to break through the enemy's strong defenses. In order to solve this problem, many commanders and fighters began to explore new methods in battle, trying to use non-human means to deliver explosive packs, and finally invented the "conscienceless cannon".
The birth of this cannon effectively solved the problem of blowing up the enemy's defenses, reduced the number of personnel and increased combat efficiency.
In the beginning, the reloading operation was very straightforward, requiring only digging a deep and inclined pit in the ground and placing black powder at the bottom of the pit. When black powder is ignited, the thrust generated by it will throw the explosive packet at the target location, where it will detonate.
In the movie, we can see a rudimentary method of digging a hole, but this method requires strict requirements such as the diameter of the pit wall, the volume of ammunition to be stored, and the angle of inclination, so the bombing effect has a lot of uncertainty.
Later, people began to use iron buckets or wooden barrels with fixed diameters and volumes, and this was the birth of the Flying Thunder Barrel. The Thunder Barrel consists of four parts, including a tin bucket, a propellant, a separator, and an explosives pack.
Conscientious production: carefully concoct iron barrel propellant and isolation plate explosive package to ensure safety and reliability"
Depending on the tin bucket used, the range and weight of the round explosive pack will vary. The smallest weighs about ten kilograms, the largest can even reach twenty kilograms, and the maximum firing range can reach about 300 meters.
However, at a distance of 150 meters, its lethality is relatively limited, and the main targets are enemy forts, barbed wire and other defenses. If the enemy is on the offensive, then the effectiveness of this cannon will be greatly reduced.
At present, there are many "conscienceless cannons" on display in the museum, and many people mistakenly think that they are used in this way in actual battles, but in reality, they are just exhibits for people to see, and they are by no means real combat **.
In war, the firing of bullets requires a strong recoil force, but the "unconscionable cannon" relies only on thin iron sheets, and if the bottom of the barrel is empty, people in the vicinity of several tens of meters may be blown away.
In order to solve this problem, our commanders and fighters absorbed the wisdom of the British Levens cannon during World War I, buried the cannon deep in the ground, successfully overcame the recoil problem when firing, and protected our soldiers and innocent civilians.
During the First World War, the Leevens gun adopted a unique design, that is, most of its barrel body was buried obliquely into the ground, and then the gap between the outside of the barrel and the pit wall was filled with earth, so as to use the heavy pressure and recoil generated by the earth to absorb the propellant and improve the safety of use.
Although the movies "Assembly" and "Outwitting Tiger Mountain"** show the launch scene of the "cannon without conscience", it is not the right way to use it, because the director and screenwriter have not done enough research and understanding.
Historically,"No conscience cannon"It played an important role in the war of liberation, but due to its shortcomings, it can only become a short-lived legend. First, the operation"No conscience cannon"It takes a lot of manpower and time to carry out the tedious excavation work, and this needs to be done by specially trained sappers.
The angle of the hole, the amount of propellant, the weight of the explosive pack, the length and delay of the fuse all need to be carefully considered, and any mistake in any one link will affect the effectiveness of the strike.
For example, the angle of the pit needs to be determined according to the distance of the target, and if the angle is not right, the target may be too close or too far to achieve the desired effect. Although"No conscience cannon"It has played an important role in warfare, but its shortcomings such as complex operation and reliance on specially trained personnel have limited its durability and extensiveness in warfare.
Prior to use, preparation was essential, including deep burial of the tunnel, accurate calculation of the charge, fuse length, and filling of the isolation plate and explosive pack. However, there are some drawbacks to this approach.
First of all, due to the technical limitations at the time, the quality was uneven, and the performance could not be guaranteed to be consistent. This means that even if you do all the preparations, the effectiveness of the explosives can be skewed.
During the War of Liberation, we could only put the explosives together in a purely manual way, which made it difficult to unify the shape of the explosives package and could not be standardized.
The aforementioned "unconscionable cannon" requires a round explosive pack, but it is difficult to ensure the fit with the barrel, so during the launch process, not only can not guarantee the flight trajectory, but also will affect the shooting accuracy.
This, combined with the inevitable errors of the operator, ultimately leads to very large deviations in the launch. In addition, the preparation of the launch of the "unconscionable cannon" requires a lot of time and effort, so it can only be used to attack the enemy's immovable fortresses, barbed wire and other defensive facilities, and cannot play a role in defensive operations.
During the War of Liberation, the enemy's defense line was no longer a single line of defense, but a multi-layered line of defense in depth, and if we wanted to break through these lines, we could not solve them at once with "guns without conscience" with limited accuracy and range, but could only advance layer by layer.
In addition, the effective range of the "unconscionable artillery" is relatively short, and it can only be used within two hundred meters of the enemy's position, which means that a lot of manpower and time need to be invested in the placement of artillery positions, and it cannot be changed frequently, which makes the artillery unit an easy target for the enemy.
The use of the grain field was too rash, as the enemy's grenadiers could easily get in due to the proximity of the distance. In addition, the enemy does not only have grenadiers, but also other **, once it hits in, the explosive bag in his hand can be easily detonated.
This makes it easy to be attacked by enemies when burying, unless the enemy does not appear. Moreover, the fault tolerance of the "conscience cannon" is also relatively low, and in the process of operation, it is not uncommon to see examples of its own ** caused by mistakes.
This is because the "unconscionable cannon" mainly uses artificial ignition, and sometimes there will be a fuse that ignites the propellant and ignites the fuse of the explosive pack; Sometimes the fuse of the propellant failed, but the fuse of the explosive bag did not fail, resulting in the explosive bag did not fly out and exploded on their own positions, which was a problem that often occurred back then, at that time due to the self-detonation of the "conscience cannon" caused by more than any other branch of the army, which is also the reason why it will hardly be used after the Liberation War.