Chapter 35: This Submachine Gun’s Rear Is A Bit Loose, Prone To Gas And Flame Leakage
After Old Scheisser said those refuting words, Bergman, the company boss standing nearby, immediately sensed that things were about to go wrong.
“This guy Old Scheisser is just too inflexible… He represents Your Highness the Duke coming to discuss the project and place orders.” Bergman couldn’t help but think this, quickly calculating in his mind how to speak to salvage the situation.
Fortunately, Lelouch was young and didn’t care much about face, so he just chuckled and proactively offered a way out:
“Mister Scheisser, I don’t think I meant to insult your company’s product quality. Of course, everything your company designs and produces is top-notch. But it’s wartime now, and we need more agile response speeds. We can’t make the officers and soldiers on the front line wait an extra three months amid the hail of bullets, right?
I fought my way out of the piles of corpses and seas of blood in Nieuwpoort! I know what the officers and soldiers on the front line need most! That day, when my company just arrived at Nieuwpoort, three divisions of Belgians on the east wanted to breakout! Later, I led the team to hold on desperately until a regiment of reinforcements arrived, then relied on that one regiment to fight against five divisions of the enemy for three days and three nights! That’s how we finally annihilated the Belgian Army!”
Lelouch usually didn’t like to show off his merits. But the old designer in front of him was clearly a bit stubborn and rigid, and Lelouch certainly didn’t want to be looked down upon.
He had to emphasize: He represented the most blood-soaked and hard-fighting batch of officers and soldiers on the front line, making an urgent request that could not be delayed.
Hearing this, Old Scheisser finally showed respect, and the rest of his words were stuck in his throat, not knowing what to say.
Bergman was also slightly startled. As a businessman, he didn’t pay much attention to the details of the front line situation, only knowing that there had been recent victories, but not who achieved them.
This officer definitely has a bright future!
He quickly smiled obsequiously: “Captain Lelouch, rest assured, Scheisser is definitely not refusing you. Anyway, this batch is just trial production samples. Whatever you want it to be, it will be. For the final mass production model, we can discuss it at length later.”
Seeing Bergman back down, Lelouch extended an olive branch again: “Of course I know the hardships in your business world. Brand value can’t be tarnished. How about this—I’ll give you an idea: Bergman can invest to set up a subsidiary company, then put a different label on it, specifically for producing experimental firearms.
Once it’s finalized for mass production later, the parent company can provide some royalty fees to spread out the research and development costs, or the parent company can make a premium version. No problem either way. The battlefield will tell the manufacturer what makes a good weapon anyway.”
In later generations, companies setting up subsidiaries for low-end brands were everywhere, so Lelouch, this transmigrator, immediately thought of a similar solution.
But this approach was absolutely rare in the early 20th century. Bergman hesitated for a moment before finally deciding: “This method is indeed flexible. How about this: We Bergman will invest 500,000 marks to establish a subsidiary company for trial production of new weapons.
Captain Lelouch, you can take shares through technical consulting. We’ll also cover part of your investment, for a 10% shareholding. The Baria Royal Family will take 15% through previously captured technical materials and subsequent promised orders. I’ll handle the specifics; you won’t need to invest cash. The remaining 75% will be ours, Bergman.”
No wonder Bergman hesitated so long—he was figuring out how to bind interests, so he simply gave away some “dry shares” in the new company.
After all, this subsidiary only has 500,000 marks in share capital. Lelouch gets shares worth 50,000 marks for his technical support, which isn’t too much. If production expands later with more capital injection, Lelouch’s 50,000 share proportion will definitely be diluted.
But if Lelouch himself performs well and can provide more technical support plans later, he can also take shares valued by technology. Overall, everything is very flexible and can be adjusted based on future contributions.
“Just by bringing a few blueprints and giving a few suggestions, it’s worth 50,000 marks in share capital?” Seeing that the other party was quite reasonable and had saved him trouble, Lelouch couldn’t help but confirm.
In Lelouch’s original plan, for this light machine gun improvement and submachine gun research and development, he didn’t plan to take much personal benefit anyway. As long as there was some quick cash reward, plus gaining the duke’s trust in his vision in the military industry to complete primitive accumulation, that would be enough.
As for whether to personally get involved in military industry later, that was for the future.
He currently had no trusted team, and as an officer, he couldn’t split himself. Having a military industry boss proactively extend an olive branch for him to take a cut without managing anything was already the best choice.
Bergman readily affirmed: “50,000 marks is just the price of a few dozen machine guns. Your contribution is worth that, and I believe you know more than just this. We really need consultants like you who understand the field and fully grasp the real needs of the front line.”
The production cost of one MG08 heavy machine gun is about 700 marks, so 50,000 marks is the money for about 80 heavy machine guns.
For a firearms company, investing this amount in a potential stock is absolutely worthwhile, especially since the excuse has been delivered right to the door.
After confirming that everything was not against regulations, Lelouch said openly: “Since Mister Bergman has put it this way, I can give you a few more suggestions right now.
First, for production progress, this first batch of trial production light machine guns can make the cooling jacket even more rudimentary. For example, instead of the original four-sided cooling jacket, just keep the symmetrical left and right sides, and omit the top and bottom entirely. That way it’s easier to maintain, and keeping the left and right sides is just for field testing the cooling effect.
The firearms we’re producing this time are mainly for winter operations, where the cooling environment is relatively good anyway, so we can leave more margin. The Belgian battlefield is muddy with water everywhere, so as long as we ensure the front of the barrel can drain, dry, and continue using conveniently after getting wet, that’s fine.
Similarly, I hear you’re still working on a short-range automatic firearm using low-power ammunition—well, let’s call it a ‘submachine gun’—is this project also stuck on cooling? I think for winter operations, we can ignore the cooling jacket issue and just produce it for use first.
After winter, when switching to a different environment for combat, bring it back for modification. This also makes it convenient to collect battlefield feedback data while researching and finalizing the model.”
Lelouch’s suggestion would absolutely be valuable golden rules anywhere else.
Later generations had plenty of “agile working methods” to speed up research and development through constant small-version updates and iterations.
To early 20th-century entrepreneurs pursuing perfection, this was completely unimaginable. But with a good testing user environment, it could really substantially improve research efficiency.
Lelouch keenly seized the meteorological characteristics of this winter operation and the geographical environment of the Belgian battlefield with water everywhere after the flood.
Adapting to time and place, he persuaded production to first get the basic version with poorer compatibility done and use it, then solve the version compatible with summer and hot, dry environments later.
Old Scheisser listened and felt like his brain couldn’t keep up. He was already in his sixties heading toward seventy, an old man nearing retirement, and really couldn’t understand a method that upended his lifelong work mode.
Hugo Scheisser, not yet forty, was still in his prime with amazing learning ability. Hearing Lelouch’s words, he truly felt he had gained a lot.
He hurriedly asked a bunch of questions, all about principles rather than techniques. Lelouch answered almost all of them, occasionally throwing in some later-generation research management common sense, making Hugo Scheisser admire him even more.
At the end, Hugo Scheisser didn’t forget to ask a specific question:
“Captain Lelouch, I will accelerate the ‘submachine gun’ project according to your requirements. But this project has one difficulty that can’t be overcome temporarily, so it probably won’t be completed within half a year—surely you won’t require submachine gun samples to be put into field testing two months from now?”
Lelouch originally didn’t want to interfere too much in specific technical issues, but hearing how troubled the other party was, he had to listen: “What specific difficulty? Let’s discuss it together.”
Hugo Scheisser then mentioned: “Compared to machine guns, the biggest change in the submachine gun is using low-power pistol bullets, but these bullets have relatively small propellant charges, and the recoil from the propellant gas is also small. It’s almost impossible to stably push open and unlock the current bolt structure.
So I’ve been trying to design a completely new bolt structure, but as you know, once something must be started from scratch and completely redesigned, the timeline is hard to guarantee. I can show you the failed bolt design I currently have in mind.”
As Hugo Scheisser spoke, he really had his assistant fetch blueprints from the lab and spread them out in front of Lelouch.
He didn’t expect the other party to provide a solution, just hoped Lelouch would recognize the difficulty, give the project more time, and not have expectations too high.
After looking, Lelouch frowned too.
He didn’t expect the early design blueprints of the historical MP18 submachine gun to have such a complex bolt structure, indeed hard to produce and machine. Even if made, the weight would be very heavy, almost as heavy as a machine gun bolt, fundamentally unsuitable for a light submachine gun.
He looked carefully again. Though not very knowledgeable about technical details, it let him see the key point: The reason Scheisser took so many detours at the beginning was his obsession with “the bolt being stably and absolutely locked when the bullet is fired.”
In plain terms, the firearms design philosophy at the time pursued making the submachine gun like a machine gun: the bolt must be completely fixed and immobile just before the bullet launches, to ensure no chamber pressure leakage and no waste of propellant gas propulsion.
Only after the bullet flies forward a distance is the bolt allowed to recoil and complete extracting the spent case and loading a new one.
But Lelouch knew history; he knew that decades later, many submachine guns used “inertia locking” for maximum simplification, like the MP38/40, which abandoned even a moment of “absolute locking,” allowing the primer to ignite and the bolt to recoil synchronously instantly, with some propellant gas leaking immediately.
And as long as this obsession was abandoned, the bolt locking mechanism design could actually be simplified a lot.
The manufacturer didn’t dare design this way at first, partly because they hadn’t thought of it, and partly fearing the military wouldn’t accept it—because then, during firing, propellant gas or muzzle flash might leak from behind the chamber. If front-line soldiers refused to use it, fearing burns to their hands or spent cases bouncing back to hit their faces, complaining about the weapon, the manufacturer would face a lot of trouble.
Fortunately, Lelouch was the military representative today; he could represent the military in accepting certain specific “quality flaws.”
So after full consideration, he gave a plan: “I think the bolt locking mechanism issue isn’t that hard to solve. Our military can try lowering the requirements: I allow gas and flash to leak from the rear of the chamber. At worst, have the soldiers wear better fire-resistant leather gloves to avoid skin burns.
Slightly lower chamber pressure and wasting some propellant gas thrust is no big deal. We’re not expecting this new gun to precisely kill targets 1000 meters away like rifles or machine guns. As long as it can kill targets within 100~200 meters, that’s enough. Low chamber pressure waste is completely acceptable! Weapon research and development doesn’t need to pursue perfection; just meet specific battlefield functional needs!”
After hearing this, Hugo Scheisser once again refreshed his understanding of the “client.”
He’d never seen someone representing the military as the “client” making such compromising demands.
Not caring about low chamber pressure, wasted gas, leaks of fire and gas?
He quickly thought of a method and tentatively asked back: “Then… if that’s the case, can I just adjust a spring with the right stiffness to hold the bolt? As soon as the bullet fires and the propellant gas recoils, the spring that normally holds the bolt can’t resist and naturally recoils to extract the case and load a new one?”
Lelouch was very satisfied with his reaction speed, stood up, and patted Scheisser’s shoulder: “Very good! That’s the kind of bold thinking we need! Don’t worry that ‘using a spring as the bolt locking mechanism’ is embarrassing. As long as it’s practical, there’s nothing embarrassing!”
（Note: The above diagram is a free-floating bolt principle diagram. The bolt has no locking mechanism, only held by a spring. Once pressure builds in the barrel, the bolt compresses the spring and ejects the case. This is the simplest bolt extraction structure, at the cost of easy gas leakage.）
Greatly encouraged, Hugo Scheisser calculated the project progress in his mind and gritted his teeth:
“If this is acceptable… I might even trial-produce a sample gun within a month and a half! However, the trial production speed will definitely be slower than the light machine gun; even if we make sample guns, we won’t produce many.”
“No problem, do your best. At that time, the Baria military will give you unimaginably large orders!” Lelouch encouraged finally, and the matter was settled.
Submachine guns shouldn’t be made too expensively anyway. Twenty-odd years later on Earth, the Britain people even dared to make cheap stuff like the Sten for five pounds.
Lelouch just helped those originally perfectionist Germania designers slightly let go of their mental burdens.
Perhaps this submachine gun’s back door is a bit loose, with gas and fire leakage issues during firing, but low cost, high reliability, and ease of use can fully compensate.
Once the product matures later, pursue advanced stuff like roller-delayed bolt or other types.
——
PS: Eight thousand words again today… Thinking that farming stories need results to break chapters properly; couldn’t bear to break in the middle.
New book seeking comments, seeking follows, seeking collections, seeking votes. Don’t know why, follows dropped over a hundred yesterday; maybe because the war scenes temporarily ended.
Everyone, give a bit of patience; I’ll try to update more and speed up.
