I want to be emperor

Chapter 474 The new grenade debuts

The rate of fire of the mortar is actually very slow. On the one hand, the matchlock fuze is very dangerous. In order to ensure safety, you must be very careful when firing the gun, otherwise, the chamber will explode every minute if you do not operate it properly.

Therefore, the mortar troops in the Chu army would rather have a slower rate of fire than bombardment.

In addition, due to the simple structure of the mortar itself, it is difficult to aim, and it takes a certain period of time to adjust every time the gun is fired, otherwise the ghost knows where the shell will fly.

The combination of the two further reduces the rate of fire of the mortar.

Needless to say in terms of accuracy, as an ultra-short-barreled mortar, its accuracy is too poor. Even if the gunner makes careful adjustments, it can only ensure that the shell will eventually fall within a general range, and this range is relatively large.

As for firing without careful adjustment, the shells can deviate by hundreds of meters... You must know that the effective range of a series of mortars of the Chu army is often only a few hundred meters.

But now the Ming army has discovered that the flowering bullets fired by the Chu bandits on the opposite side are not only numerous and dense, but also very accurate, almost as accurate as solid shells.

Seeing the continuous shells falling on his position, a Ming army general panicked: "Why are there so many flowering shells in the Chu thief?"

"There are also flower bombs that can only be fired with mortars? How did these thieves use long guns to open flower bombs?"

Even if he tried his best, he still couldn't figure out why the Chu thief was able to fire explosive bullets with a long-barreled field cannon, and he shot them so fast!

On the other side of the battlefield, Colonel Wen Jiliang, the artillery regiment commander of the No.17 Division, smiled as he watched the constant explosions ahead.

"These new grenades are so easy to use, I have to apply to the higher authorities to distribute more new grenades."

"As long as there are enough new grenades, our shelling is strong enough to crush any enemy!"

Huang Guangmao, commander of the No.17 Division, said: "It's a good idea. Now that the new grenade has just been put into production, there are more troops waiting for the new grenade. We can win this batch of grenade this time. I put my old face on and don’t try my best to achieve the result, it’s impossible to want more.”

As the commander of the Shaanxi garrison, Huang Guangmao also served as the commander of the No.17 division and lieutenant general. This is already considered a senior general in the army of the Great Chu Empire, and his rank is higher than most division commanders.

In the Chu army, the standard military rank for division commanders is usually only major general, whether it is a first-class division or a second-class division, the division commander is a major general.

Huang Guangmao was able to become a lieutenant general not because of his position as a division commander, but because of his position as the commander of the Shaanxi garrison. In addition to the No.17 division, he also had a second-class division and a mortar regiment directly under him. What about troops?

As a lieutenant general of the army, he has a good understanding of the internal situation of the military. He knows that a new type of howitzer was successfully developed at the end of last year, and a powerful howitzer was successfully developed together with it, that is, the [-]-pound light howitzer .

After the successful research and development of the new type of grenade, Emperor Luo Zhixue personally decreed to develop and produce new type of howitzers that can be used in field guns of various calibers, and organized the production of [-]-pound light howitzers and even larger caliber howitzers.

In order to shorten the research and development time, it is also to enable the production lines of many arsenals to directly and quickly organize production.

The research and development personnel directly followed the successful development of the [-]-pound new grenade and the new light howitzer to a simple zoom-in or zoom-in operation.

In just a few days, three new grenades with different calibers, 130mm, 110mm, and [-]mm, were produced.

They are respectively used for the fourteen catties cannon, the nine catties field gun/cannon, and the five catties field gun/cannon.

At the same time, new types of 170mm and 150mm howitzers were developed, which, together with the original 24mm howitzers, were used in the original mortars, that is, 48-jin mortars, [-]-jin mortars, and [-]-jin mortars. .

These new grenades of different calibers, because there are new 150mm caliber grenades, the design and development are very simple.

Simply zoom in or zoom out.

As for the production, it is also simple. The shell casings can be produced directly by slightly modifying the original grenade production line. All the ammunition vehicles need to do is to build a new fuze production line.

The craftsmanship of wooden fuzes is not very difficult, and it is not even more difficult than the production process of matchlocks.

Therefore, the production of a batch of new grenades of different calibers can be completed in a short period of time.

However, due to the tight research and development time and tight production, these new shells still use the technology of the old flower shells in many aspects, and are still lacking in quality and even safety.

For example, in the production of the most basic shells, in fact, the materials used in the shell design of the new grenade are better, and better processing technology has also been added, so that the shell shells of the new grenade can be made thinner and can withstand larger The chamber pressure does not fragment, and after the explosion, the fragments are more and more uniform.

However, none of these can be realized on the original grenade production line. Therefore, the new grenade currently produced by the Chu Army cannot meet the original requirements in terms of performance.

But how to put it, the new type of grenade produced and used now is a very typical emergency product.

There is a war ahead, and the Western Front campaign is going to be launched on a large scale. There is not so much time for the Ministry of Industry to slowly toss, and then build new production lines one after another. The only way to achieve rapid production is to sacrifice certain performance and even safety. capable.

That's the case, because time is relatively tight, and the current production capacity of new grenades is not high.

Even if the new type of grenade has been finalized above, it will be sent to the troops participating in the Western Front for use as soon as possible to strengthen the combat effectiveness of the Western Front troops. At the same time, it will also be tested through actual combat to provide suggestions for subsequent improvements.

But there are also many troops participating in the war on the western front, and Huang Guangmao also spent a lot of effort to get a batch of new grenades from behind, and the number is relatively limited.

After this batch is finished, although there will be supplements in the future, the number will definitely not be too much.

So seeing the excitement of the artillery unit, Huang Guangmao had no choice but to order that the new grenades should be used sparingly and used on critical moments and important targets.

Some non-important targets that are not time-critical can be fired slowly with mortars and old-style grenades.

And some targets that can be directly destroyed by solid shells should also be hit with solid shells first.

In short, don't use the new grenade to hit any target.

-

Rao is the artillery unit of the Chu army, which has begun to slow down the use of new-style grenades, and instead fires some solid shells and mortars to fire old-style grenades. The Ming army on the opposite side still can't hold it.

The Ming army in many fortifications outside the city suffered heavy casualties and had to retreat, or simply hid and did not dare to show their heads.

Faced with this situation, the infantry on the front line would naturally not miss this opportunity.

Soon many medium and small-scale assault operations were launched, and many fortifications of the Ming army outside the city were captured one by one, pushing the front line to the front of the Jinzhou city wall.

The next thing will be a matter of course.

The No.17 Division launched a full-line assault on Jinzhou on February [-]. Amidst the explosion of many new grenades, the infantry commando directly captured the city wall, and then opened the east gate to welcome a large number of infantry into the city.

In the afternoon of the same day, the Chu army successively captured a large section of the city wall and penetrated into the inner city area.

The Ming army defending the city suffered heavy casualties, and their morale fell to the bottom.

At about three o'clock in the afternoon that day, the remnants of the defenders in the city killed the middle and senior civil officials such as the right counselor of Shaanxi and the magistrate of Hanzhong in the city, and then surrendered to the Chu army as a whole under the leadership of a deputy commander.

As a result, this military fortress, which had resisted the Chu army for several years, fell completely under the control of the Chu army.

And the whole process is extremely fast!
The No.17 Division of the Chu Army set off from Xunyang on February [-]th.

Arrived outside Jinzhou City on the afternoon of the [-]th.

On the [-]th, a tentative attack was launched to clear up many fortifications and fortresses of the Ming army outside the city.

On the [-]th, a general attack was launched on the city itself, and Jinzhou City was captured in the afternoon of the same day. Nearly ten thousand remnants in the city surrendered to the Chu army after killing the civil servants who supervised the war.

Calculated from this, it only took six days for the Chu army to start from Xunyang and take Jinzhou.

Leaving aside the two days of marching and the two days of preparation, the siege actually only took two days from the start of the large-scale bombardment.

It took only such a short time to capture Jinzhou City, which the Ming army had worked hard for several years. The role of the new grenade was crucial.

Without the intensive artillery fire formed by the new grenade, it would be impossible for the Chu army to capture many forts and fortifications outside the city so quickly, let alone suppress the enemy's firepower at the top of the city directly after the general offensive was launched, leaving the commando with little With great loss, he climbed the city walls and then opened the city gates.

Huang Guangmao wrote a report after the war. In addition to reporting the detailed process of the Jinzhou Campaign, he also focused on the actual combat application of the new grenade.

Several copies of Huang Guangmao's report were copied, one was sent to Jinling City, and the other was sent to the front line of Tongguan.

Because the road is far away, and there is a detour in the middle, and the terrain is not easy to walk.

Therefore, even if the battle report from Hanzhong was rushed to Tongguan by [-] miles, General Huang Dingquan, the commander of the Shaanxi-Gansu Campaign, still only saw the relevant report ten days after the end of the Jinzhou Campaign.

After reading the report, Huang Dingquan said: "There is no doubt that with the introduction of new grenades, warfare has entered a new level."

"In the Battle of Jinzhou, facing the fortress that the enemy had been operating for several years, the No.17 Division quickly conquered the city without the support of a large number of heavy siege artillery and 48-jin mortars. effect!"

Major General Yang Xiangfei, chief of staff of the Shaanxi-Gansu Campaign Command, said, "Yes, the emergence of new grenades has greatly changed the mode of warfare."

(End of this chapter)