Chapter 309: Smokeless Powder
After Spain successfully secured its colonial rule over the Cameroon region, other European countries were not to be outdone and accelerated their pace of colonizing Africa.
Unlike Spain’s focus solely on West Africa, the European powers led by Britain, France, and Germany turned their gaze to the entire continent of Africa.
This also led to the Germans, after failing to colonize Cameroon, showing no hesitation and immediately heading to other regions in Africa.
After all, the vast continent of Africa still had much land uncolonized by the European powers, and while Germany was powerful, there was no need for it to fight Spain to the death over this piece of land in Cameroon.
It must be said that the places the Germans targeted were indeed numerous.
Besides Cameroon, they were also interested in the Gold Coast and East Africa.
Of course, the Gold Coast here was not Spain’s Gold Coast Colony, but the coastal area collectively known as the Gold Coast by the European countries.
The place the Germans truly targeted was the region east of Spain’s Gold Coast, which in posterity would be known as Togo.
The mineral resources here were also quite abundant, though unlike the Gold Coast occupied by Spain, the mineral resources in the Togo region were mainly phosphate, limestone, barite, quartz sand, manganese, and other ores.
Although these ores were not as attractive as gold and silver ore or diamonds, nor could they directly promote industrial progress like coal mines and iron ore.
But these ores also had great uses, especially phosphate, which was the main raw material for producing agricultural fertilizer and could effectively increase grain yield on barren land.
Spain’s homeland still needed various agricultural fertilizers to boost grain yield, which also meant that the ores in the Togo region were important to Spain.
Precisely because of this, almost at the same time Giuseppe occupied the Kingdom of Bam, troops were also being dispatched from the Gold Coast side to continuously invade the land of the Yoruba people.
The land occupied by the Yoruba people was precisely what would later be Togo, and this land was caught between Spain’s Gold Coast and Whydah Colony.
Because it lay on the connection line from the Gold Coast to the Congo Territory in Spain’s plans, Spain could not let this land go to the Germans no matter what.
The good news was that as early as hundreds of years ago, Portuguese had set foot on the land of the Yoruba people.
Of course, a small number of Spanish explorers and colonists had also reached this land, but the region Spain ultimately colonized was the Guinea Colony in the Gulf of Guinea.
However, these descendants of Portuguese colonists could still be utilized. Spain had already obtained several colonies in West Africa from Portugal, and these Portuguese who had fully immigrated to Africa could only submit to Spanish rule.
By leveraging the influence brought by long-term Portuguese colonization in this land, Spain could occupy the Yoruba people’s land more quickly, preventing the Germans from coming from behind and forcibly inserting themselves between Spain’s Gold Coast Colony and Congo Territory.
Because European colonists had all accelerated the pace of colonizing Africa, local wars were breaking out in various regions of Europe.
Many countries were emulating Germany’s actions, abandoning the previous method of economic colonization and choosing to use force to quickly achieve their colonial rule.
What could clearly be seen was that during this period, countries were placing large orders for weapons and equipment to lay the foundation for their African colonization.
Speaking of which, since the birth of the breech-loading rifle, Spain’s standard rifle had not changed for more than ten years.
The Vitali M1872 rifle, since its birth, had always been the standard equipment of the Spanish Royal Army and the Guard, and was also widely equipped to Spain’s colonial army.
In the 1870s, the design of this rifle was quite advanced and ensured that the combat effectiveness of the Spanish Army remained at a first-class European level.
But it could not be denied that with the passage of time, the Vitali M1872 rifle had gradually fallen behind the times. This firearm, improved from the earliest breech-loading Swiss Vitali rifle, had pretty much reached the time to step down.
More importantly, 1884 was also a rather special year.
For the military industries of various countries, 1884 would see the birth of a great invention: smokeless powder, which would change the history of firearms in each country.
In fact, the discovery of smokeless powder could be traced back to a routine experiment by Swiss chemist Schoenbein in
On an ordinary day in 1845, while conducting an experiment, Schoenbein accidentally knocked over a bottle filled with a mixture of nitric acid and sulfuric acid. When the solution splashed on the table, he casually picked up a cotton apron to wipe it, then dried the apron over a fire.
What he did not expect was that when the apron approached the stove, there was only a “puff” sound, and the apron disappeared instantly like a magic trick, without producing any smoke.
Schoenbein immediately realized this was a great invention. He recalled the entire experimental process and successfully discovered a new compound for making gunpowder, which he called guncotton.
This new compound was later known in posterity as nitrocellulose, an important raw material for making smokeless powder.
However, the nitrocellulose at that time was unstable; as long as the temperature exceeded 40 degrees Celsius, it would decompose automatically and self-ignite.
This caused great trouble for chemists trying to research this new compound, and over the nearly 40 years, there were too many news examples of laboratories burning or even exploding due to nitrocellulose research.
For smokeless powder that had long been discovered, Spain’s Royal Academy of Sciences certainly would not let it go.
Under Carlo’s strong investment, the Royal Academy of Sciences had established a research and development project on smokeless powder more than ten years ago and recruited a large number of chemists from Spain and abroad to join the project.
After more than ten years of research, Spain’s smokeless powder finally had some results.
For the biggest problem of nitrocellulose instability, Spanish chemists discovered that by dissolving it in a solution made of ether and ethanol, supplemented with stabilizers and some special treatments, the originally unstable nitrocellulose could be stabilized.
It was precisely through this method that Spain produced true smokeless powder.
Although smokeless powder had been born, Carlo did not become complacent. Carlo understood that European countries were all investing massive resources into smokeless powder research and development, and Spain might not be the first country to develop smokeless powder.
Even if Spain was the first to successfully tame nitrocellulose, other countries would certainly follow quickly to produce smokeless powder.
The current smokeless powder, because it used only nitrocellulose as the raw material, was also called single-base powder and had a lot of room for improvement.
However, compared to the black powder widely used in bullets and cannonballs across European countries, even single-base powder could far lead in various data.
As early as after Spain successfully invented smokeless powder, Carlo had received a detailed report from the Royal Academy of Sciences.
The two most important changes of smokeless powder compared to black powder were, first, a significant increase in gunpowder power, and second, as its name implied, almost no smoke was produced during explosion, which would have an extremely important role in war.
Currently, rifles using black powder produced large amounts of smoke with each shot. This made the frontal battlefield appear shrouded in smoke and also exposed the army’s position.
Especially in the era of line infantry firing, artillerymen only needed to look at where the smoke was thicker and fire blindly toward the smokiest areas to hit enemies anyway.
The large amount of smoke also affected visibility on one’s own side; how could soldiers in the smoke aim at enemies outside the smoke?
For smokeless powder, this biggest defect on the battlefield would be completely improved; enemies would not easily discover one’s movements, and one’s own side would not worry about vision being affected by smoke.
Plus, with smokeless powder’s greater energy, rifles would have longer range and stronger power, which would also have a revolutionary impact on weapons and equipment.
The smokeless powder research team provided a batch of smokeless powder to the Royal Arsenal, where they produced a batch of rifle bullets made with smokeless powder.
According to tests by the Royal Arsenal, under the same rifle with different bullets, the smokeless powder rifle bullets not only had faster rate of fire and stronger power, but also much greater range than black powder bullets.
It must be known that the effective shooting distance of current breech-loading rifles using black powder bullets was only about 100 to 200 meters; beyond 200 meters, hitting a person was basically impossible, unless it was those unlucky ones who choked even on cool water.
General army engagement distances were also kept around 100 meters, because only then could one’s soldiers ensure hitting the enemy.
Clearly, the birth of smokeless powder could thoroughly change this phenomenon.
With the bullet head and cartridge unchanged, only the gunpowder altered, the new bullet’s muzzle velocity increased rapidly from the original 400 meters per second to 650 meters per second—an improvement that could not be called exaggerated.
The improvement was not only in rate of fire, but also in the rifle’s effective shooting distance.
According to tests by the Royal Arsenal, the Vitali M1872 rifle, when using smokeless powder rifle bullets, could increase its effective shooting distance from less than 200 meters to over 400 meters, with bullets even retaining sufficient damage power within 600 meters.
However, beyond 400 meters, with the current rifle design, it was already difficult to guarantee bullet hit rate.
After all, the Vitali M1872 rifle was designed for close-range combat, and the designers at the time could not have imagined that bullets could now reach distances over 600 meters.
This also brought a new problem: Spain’s rifles must be improved to adapt to smokeless powder rifle bullets.
Carlo was very bold and with a wave of his hand, had the Spanish Ministry of Defense issue a tender for new rifles to all armories in Spain.
Although the Royal Arsenal was Spain’s largest military industry enterprise, for research on new rifles, Carlo would not put all his eggs in one basket.
All Spanish armories could participate in the rifle tender, and for some particularly excellent design products, even if not ultimately selected by the Ministry of Defense, there would still be certain rewards to help these excellent armories go further.
The reason for considering only domestic tenders in Spain was that current armories did not have the concept of aiding the enemy.
For armory orders, even competing countries could reach cooperation.
Carlo did not want Spain’s newly developed rifle to be mass-purchased by other countries right away, incidentally exposing this great killer smokeless powder to other countries.
Although Carlo knew other countries were also researching smokeless powder and even knew that the French would develop it this year.
But Spain actively leaking it was definitely different from other countries independently developing it; before other countries developed smokeless powder, what needed to be kept secret still had to be kept secret.
Soon, more than a dozen large and small Spanish armories all received the rifle tender announcement from the Ministry of Defense.
The Ministry of Defense clearly specified various requirements for the new rifle in the tender, hoping it could achieve faster rate of fire, greater stability, and higher accuracy compared to Spain’s existing Vitali M1872 rifle.
The Ministry of Defense also specifically required that the new rifles designed by each armory elevate the effective range to 400 to 600 meters, and maintain a certain accuracy within a 400-meter shooting distance.
This requirement was also the strangest and most headache-inducing for the major armories.
The previous requirements for faster rate of fire and greater stability could actually reference the strengths and weaknesses of the Vitali M1872 rifle: inherit the strengths and improve the weaknesses.
Only the shooting distance was not so easy to modify. The Vitali M1872 rifle’s shooting distance was only under 200 meters, yet the Ministry of Defense required 400 to 600 meters for the new rifle—wasn’t this making things difficult?
Which decent person could increase shooting distance just by changing rifle design without altering the bullet? Let alone such a two- to three-fold increase—this was simply impossible for humans.
Just as some small armories were about to abandon the bid due to the Ministry of Defense’s harsh requirements, the Ministry of Defense issued explanation documents to these armories.
This explanation document introduced how Spain’s newly developed smokeless powder improved shooting distance, which made the large and small armories suddenly understand; they finally realized why the Ministry of Defense had such harsh requirements for the new rifle’s shooting distance—it turned out they were fully prepared.
Of course, before opening this explanation document, Ministry of Defense officials had explicitly ordered that anyone who accessed the document must sign a confidentiality agreement and promise not to disclose any information in the document for the next five years, including Spain’s newly developed smokeless powder.
Why five years?
Because after five years, smokeless powder would pretty much be commonplace across Europe. By then, with all European countries’ rifles equipped with smokeless powder rifle bullets, there would naturally be no need to keep smokeless powder information secret.
Besides this confidentiality agreement, these armories were also informed that if their rifle design was adopted by the Ministry of Defense, any orders they signed with any foreign enterprise or country in the next five years would require approval from the Spanish Government and Ministry of Defense.
Although most Spaniards were very patriotic, Carlo and the Spanish Government dared not bet on the patriotic hearts of capitalists.
Such a treaty could ensure that Spain’s new rifle would not be easily obtained by foreigners, naturally also delaying smokeless powder’s invention by other countries by a few years.
Still the same logic: after five years, smokeless powder-related firearms and bullets would be commonplace, and Spain would not stop these armories from exporting related rifles and bullets.
Of course, if these armories’ designs were adopted by the Ministry of Defense, they would not worry about orders in the next five years.
The Spanish Army would definitely fully replace with new rifles, plus large colonial armies; even the Royal Arsenal would need to produce for a long time to meet the Spanish military’s demand.
Not to mention these small and medium-sized armories; even if they produced at full capacity, they might not finish in five years.
This was also why these small and medium-sized armories quickly agreed to the military’s two requirements; after all, the military’s two requirements seemed harsh but actually had little impact on them.
Requiring Spanish Government and Ministry of Defense approval to export weapons and ammunition seemed like an overbearing clause, but it depended on whether these small and medium-sized armories’ production volume could keep up.
If production volume could not keep up, they would not have the ability to sign arms trade orders with foreign countries anyway, so they would not violate this weapons export regulation.
The large and small armories, having thoroughly set their minds at ease due to the Ministry of Defense’s explanation, immediately threw themselves into research and development of the new rifle.
The Ministry of Defense’s emphasis on the new rifle was visible to the naked eye; besides cooperating with the armory that developed the new rifle, it would also additionally pay that armory about 1 million peseta subsidy funds to help the military industry tower expand faster and meet the production volume needs of the Ministry of Defense.
Don’t underestimate this mere 1 million peseta subsidy funds.
Currently, aside from the Royal Arsenal, only a few armories established for decades have an overall value exceeding this amount.
The remaining small armories, even counting factory buildings and equipment together, have a total value not reaching 1 million peseta level.
According to the scale of Spain’s military industry, an armory with a total valuation reaching 1 million peseta can barely be considered a medium-sized armory.
Regrettably, Spain has only three armories reaching medium scale, plus the sole large arsenal, the Royal Arsenal, which are the representative enterprises Spain’s military industry can currently put forward.
Theoretically, Spain’s final new rifle should emerge from the Royal Arsenal or one of those three medium-sized armories.
After all, larger armories have superior equipment and technical personnel reserves compared to smaller ones.
Unless a smaller armory produces a weapon expert worth highlighting in history, they are unlikely to win this weapon tender.
The Spanish Ministry of Defense’s main attention is also on the Royal Arsenal and those three medium-sized armories, hoping they can develop a standard rifle meeting their requirements.
What Carlo and the Ministry of Defense didn’t expect was that the first to submit a rifle design was not the Royal Arsenal, but an obscure medium-sized armory.
Qiaomengtuoya Machinery Manufacturing Plant—seeing the name, Carlo almost thought it made tractors.
After confirming it was indeed a genuine armory, Carlo said nothing more and instead focused on the weapon design they submitted.
From the appearance, this rifle was highly similar to Spain’s original Vitali M1872 rifle, or rather, the former was an improved version of the latter.
Actual testing confirmed this; due to improvements in the sights, the new rifle could indeed hit more accurately at longer distances than the original Vitali M1872 rifle.
This not-so-large armory had also made certain improvements to the rifle’s internals, achieving longer shooting distance and faster rate of fire.
But the problem was, as a product from a not-so-large armory, the specially manufactured test rifle actually experienced a fatal chamber explosion during testing.
The chamber explosion occurred during the rifle lifespan test. Fortunately, it was a new gun test without manual operation; the rifle was fixed, and a rope connected to the trigger for firing.
After continuous firing of over a hundred bullets, the chamber explosion suddenly happened, turning the rifle into a pile of parts of various sizes.
This instantly changed the smiling faces of the Ministry of Defense officials and left the experts from this small factory extremely embarrassed.
After this incident, let alone having their design adopted by the Ministry of Defense—future cooperation would likely be approached cautiously.
Weapon stability and safety are still very important, which the Ministry of Defense specifically required and emphasized in the tender.
Evidently, no matter how excellently this factory’s rifle performed in previous aspects, if there were issues with stability and safety, the Ministry of Defense would not consider adopting their rifle design.
After all, the users of the rifles are Spanish soldiers; the Ministry of Defense must consider them.
Compared to other rifle data, the Ministry of Defense values stability and safety the most.
Carlo also hopes that rifles produced in Spain are for defeating enemies, not harming Spanish soldiers in such bizarre ways.
However, considering this small factory didn’t do it intentionally, Carlo didn’t blame them but told them to go back and improve the rifle as much as possible to extend its lifespan.
If unable to improve, it would be best to abandon this rifle design early.
After all, this rifle design retained the basic shape of the Vitali M1872 rifle, with only internal modifications—perhaps one reason for the chamber explosion.
For a small factory, achieving this was already quite excellent. After all, incrementally improving a rifle requires massive costs, especially redesigning from exterior to internals, which demands inestimable research and development funds and costs—this is also why Carlo and the Ministry of Defense don’t favor small armories producing rifles meeting requirements.
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