I Became a Witch and Started an Industrial Revolution

A four-stroke piston engine was actually similar in manufacturing difficulty to a piston-type internal combustion engine, except for the arrangement of the cylinders.

Each cylinder was relatively independent, connected by a specially-shaped crankshaft in the middle.

Four cylinders, always in different strokes, were assembled together; relying on the inertia generated by pressurization, mechanical transmission was achieved, maintaining the continuous rotation of the crankshaft, which in turn drove the propeller to spin.

As for the cooling system during engine operation, liquid cooling was adopted.

Although air cooling was the mainstream, with the current technological capabilities, air cooling was still unnecessary~

However, while the engine was one of the essential components for building an aircraft, it was not the main one.

The most important thing — which most people, and even many aviation pioneers in her previous life, had failed to realize — was the [flight control system].

Fortunately, Mitia possessed knowledge from her past life and could design a mature, three-axis linkage flight control transmission system.

In the magical simulation wind tunnel constructed by Mitia, the training aircraft used for cultivating test pilots was not the real aircraft under development, but gliders.

Gliders were used to test the flight control system and to refine the basic principles —

Lift, air pressure coefficient, total surface area generating lift, velocity, and lift coefficient —

That is, lift, gravity, thrust, and drag.

To manufacture a usable combat aircraft, aside from training pilots with gliders, it was also necessary to calculate a more reasonable aspect ratio of the wings.

Biplanes could increase lift by 20% compared to monoplanes and required lower material standards, making them suitable for Mitia to build her first air squadron from scratch.

However, this was only an emergency measure.

By her estimation, even with her continuous guidance and improvements, the first generation of fighter aircraft, once rolled off the line and put into use, would most likely be unable to exceed 200 kilometers per hour...

In other words, in this world, it could at best be used for reconnaissance at high altitudes or for pilot training — as for combat or attack missions, that was out of the question.

Half a month later—

While Mitia was busy with large-scale reconstruction of a new medium-sized wind tunnel, the Seris Pue Lalor Frontline Army was the first to blow the horn of war.

Facing Ovinia, the nation that housed the headquarters of the Church, Seris didn’t even bother to issue a formal declaration of war.

The military headquarters had practically wept and begged the central capital for half a month just to secure an ammunition supply.

They even directly transferred in two Astal Express Train Cannons, reinforcing them into immovable fortress batteries, and launched a fierce long-range bombardment against the city walls.

At the same time, field guns, medium and heavy mortars, and tracked self-propelled artillery all joined the large-scale fire assault, which lasted for a full hour.

The military dubbed this bombardment operation [Raging Sea and Furious Waves].

It was not just a single wave, but multiple rounds and batches of overwhelming bombardment.

After years of warfare, both sides had already understood each other’s capabilities; however, the Ovinia side’s intelligence was still somewhat delayed.

The rigid internal politics of the kingdom and its tangled web of interests had long delayed the adoption of new weaponry — they were still clinging to the same outdated arsenal.

Apart from a few old-style magic crystal cannons, which still posed significant threats, there was only a highly unreliable rotary hand-cranked machine gun of some danger.

The rest were those several hundred-ton treasures of the Third King’s era.

Meanwhile, the Lalor Frontline Army had long been conducting continuous deep reconnaissance against Pue Lalor, thoroughly mapping out its urban defenses and military facilities.

After the bombardment, more than ten tracked armored vehicles, each with a V-shaped steel plate mounted on the front, charged onto the battlefield.

Behind them followed another batch of vehicles of the same model, stripped of all weapons and equipped with only two long steel plates on their backs.

Using the thick steel plates at their fronts as shields, they advanced under Lalor’s dense gunfire toward the barbed-wire defenses, cutting open assault paths for their comrades.

The top-mounted machine gunners began suppressing the bunkers behind the trenches, while the soldiers inside the vehicles disembarked quickly.

Coordinating with the rear vehicles, they worked together to assemble the long steel beams.

Under Lalor’s city walls, to prevent Seris from advancing directly to their foundations, they had deliberately dug a five-meter-wide trench — a measure meant to keep Seris’s armored vehicles at bay.

Clearly, Seris intended to construct a mobile bridge directly over the trench and attack the city walls of Lalor from close range.

Naturally, Lalor could not allow the explosively aggressive Seris army to get that close.

Once the bombardment ended, they unleashed every long-range weapon they had left.

However, not even half an hour after the first bombardment ended, the Lalor artillery positions, just ready to retaliate, were again obliterated by another massive round of shelling.

Lalor believed that Seris troops were still near the city and hesitated to bombard recklessly.

Yet they failed to observe the battlefield closely — aside from the engineers, there wasn’t a single Seris regular unit present.

In recent times, they had grown familiar with Seris’s emphasis on human rights and were subconsciously misled by that assumption.

The result was disastrous — their positions were flattened under another storm of shells, leaving them crying for their lives.

That was the price of “hearing” but not truly understanding.

Soldiers were soldiers, civilians were civilians.

Obedience to orders was the soldier’s highest duty — even if knives rained from the sky, once the command was given, they must charge forward, let alone through artillery fire.

Moreover, leading the bridge-building at the front were the engineer company’s commander, deputy commander, and sergeant major — all key officers were on the front line.

Thus, the soldiers didn’t feel like they were being sent to die meaninglessly.

Seris officers had the right to shout, “Follow me!” But if anyone dared say, “Go, you first!” — that night, the Soldiers’ Committee would have them publicly criticized and stripped of rank.

One of the steel bridge frames was struck by a King Ovinia III Heavy Cannon, the massive shell blasting a crater into the ground.

The bridge-laying engineer vehicle and its escorting tracked vehicle were blown into the air — the entire squad vanished without a scream, including the company commander.

With the commander dead, the deputy took command, continuing to direct the troops to bridge the trench.

Then the third round of artillery came again — but this time, the Seris artillery schedule was pushed forward by half an hour, throwing off the kingdom’s predictions.

This rapid-fire barrage lasted five minutes, granting the engineers a rare window of safety.

They quickly used hydraulic presses to push the heavy steel bridge across the large trench.

“Report! Assembly complete!”

“Report, assembly complete!”

“Retreat! Retreat!”

The soldiers swiftly boarded their vehicles and withdrew.

From afar, the bunker soldiers’ faces turned pale.

“Damn it— it’s not over yet?”

Sure enough, the artillery units that had been bombarding the city walls to suppress elevated defenses began gradually adjusting their firing angles.

The landing zone of shells crept closer and closer to the frontline fortifications, until the entire area was engulfed.

To suppress the rear and still bombard the front — such continuous firepower delivery far exceeded the defending marshal’s expectations.