Under the command of Li Zhi, outside the city of Huai'an, a World War I-level defense system was quickly built. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

Li Zhi had also built defensive camps before to maximize his firepower, such as building a camp at Qingshankou. But the enemies targeted by such camps are all Qing soldiers with cold weapons. The Qing soldiers were not equipped with firearms on a large scale, and the defense of the camp could be lower.

And in front of the rifles and artillery of the Jiangbei Army, the old-fashioned city walls and barracks are no longer useful. Both sides fought with rifled guns and cannons, and wooden forts, walls, or even bastions were not the best way to defend themselves. In this form of warfare, the best defense is a World War I-style trench system.

The trench system consisted of trenches, barbed wire, and pillboxes.

The first was a trench that surrounded the walls of Huai'an City, which was two meters deep and a little deeper than the height of the soldiers. Li Zhi was designed so that the soldiers could shoot outside on a small bench without having to bow their heads and bend down when walking around the trenches.

Of course, the use of benches also serves a defensive purpose. In the unlikely event that the enemy rushed into the trench, they would not be able to use the trench to attack the Tiger Army without a bench.

This is followed by barbed wire. Barbed wire can effectively block the charge of the enemy's cavalry and infantry, it is easy to lay and works well.

In these years, after converter steelmaking began to produce cheap steel, Li Zhi began to build reinforced concrete buildings in batches. To build this kind of building, it is natural to use iron wire to tie steel bars, so Li Zhi has various types of iron wires in his hands. It doesn't take a lot of steel to lay two rings of barbed wire outside Huai'an, and there are enough stocks in nearby prefectures and counties.

The last thing that needed to be built was the bunker. Under the threat of a thousand heavy artillery pieces of the Jiangbei Army, Li Zhi was not ready to build Mingbao. Li Zhi plans to build a dark fortress by clinging to the terrain outside the city. Bunkers were often built in raised mounds next to the trenches, using a thick layer of earth as cover, and only opening in the front, exposing the muzzles of the cannons.

The muzzle of the bunker was only one or two meters above the ground, and under the thick layer of soil was a forty-centimeter-thick reinforced concrete, which was extremely defensive.

These bunkers contained 800 heavy artillery pieces of the Southern Route Army.

Li Zhi built 800 hidden forts in one go, and there were 200 hidden forts in each of the four directions of east, west, south and north, and each dark fort could place four heavy artillery. In this way, 800 heavy guns could be transferred from the trenches to any direction of the city, and the enemy could be bombarded with concentrated artillery at any time.

There was a lot of cement and steel in Huai'an, but it was not enough to build 800 bunkers. Li Zhi asked the prefectures and counties near Shandong to immediately start transporting supplies to Huai'an, striving to gather the required cement and steel bars within fifteen days.

Eight hundred bunkers are scary to say, but in fact, they are the workload of pouring concrete into eight hundred small houses. Li Zhi requisitioned 20,000 residents in the city to build these facilities, and the number of people was so strong that it would take a few days to build these defense systems.

Two hundred meters in front of the city wall was an area controlled by the Tiger Ben Army, and the Jiangbei Army fired a few cannons at most a few miles away to harass Li Zhi's construction team. Moreover, the construction of trenches and pillboxes is basically the construction of digging pits, and it is only necessary to dig a deep enough pit in one place, and the subsequent tunnels that are extended from this pit are all under the ground, and the artillery of the Jiangbei Army cannot hit the people in the tunnel at all.

More than 20 days later, Li Zhi's trench defense system was basically formed.

During this time, although the Jiangbei Army was eyeing Huai'an City, it did not launch a large-scale attack. After all, thousands of people die in every attack, and without the certainty of victory, the Jiangbei Army will not come up to die in vain. And after Li Zhi's new defense system was built, the generals of the Jiangbei Army were dumbfounded.

Shi Kefa held the clairvoyant mirror sent by the Dutch, looked at the defense system in the distance, and took a few breaths. The ditch that went deep into the ground suddenly made the artillery of the Jiangbei Army useless.

For the people of this era, the trench system of the First World War level was undoubtedly a new thing. Li Zhi's defense system deeply shocked the generals of the Jiangbei Army.

If the Tiger Army defends on the city wall, no matter how it leans against the battlement wall, the cannon will still have an angle to hit the Tiger Army. However, when the soldiers of the Tiger Army entered the trench, Shi Kefa found that it was impossible for the cannon to hit the soldiers in the trench.

Quite simply, because even if the cannon is projectile, the curvature of the curve is extremely limited. When the cannonballs were fired at the trench, the shells could only hit the back wall of the trench when they fell, and could not hurt the Tiger Ben soldiers walking in the trench at all.

Unless it was when the Tiger Warrior came out to shoot, the cannon hit the soldier's head directly. But the probability of that is so small that it is basically negligible.

The Jiangbei Army, which did not have flowering shells, had no way to deal with the Tiger Ben Army hiding in the trenches.

The artillery of the Jiangbei Army began to fire at Li Zhi's trench system, and then it ceased fire directly, so as not to waste shells and gunpowder.

And in the dark fortress wrapped in thick earth, the defense is even more against the sky. The mud more than half a meter thick outside the bunker seemed to be a layer of armor, blocking all the shells of the Jiangbei Army outside.

The artillery of the Jiangbei Army could not hit the Tiger Army, but the artillery in the pillbox of the Tiger Army could bombard the Jiangbei Army.

Shi Kefa looked at Li Zhi's trench and dark fort with a clairvoyant mirror, and was a little speechless.

"What kind of means did Li Zhi come up with? How to make soldiers jump into ditches to avoid shells, so that all our cannons are useless. Won't Li Zhi stay on the city wall in the future? ”

Zuo Liangyu held the clairvoyant mirror and looked at Li Zhi's defense system, pondered for a long time, shook his head and said, "This soldier, I'm afraid that such a defense facility can't be broken through at all." ”

Shi Kefa hadn't seen the Tiger Ben Army soldier on the small stool show his head at this time, and said, "However, the soldiers of the Li Thief can't shoot after entering the pit, how can they fight our firecrackers?" ”

Wu Sangui said: "This soldier, we might as well send the firecrackers to try!" ”

Shi Kefa nodded and said, "Yes! Let the firecracker go up and rush it. ”

This month, Shi Kefa got more than 10,000 new rifles from the rear, and his strength was even stronger. After making up his mind, he asked 20,000 Jiangbei Army soldiers to rush forward with rifles.

Soon, Scofa witnessed the magic of the trench system.

The history of the First World War has proven that for a trench system crammed with riflemen, whoever attacks is looking for death.

When the stragglers of the Jiangbei Army rushed into the trench four hundred meters away, the soldiers of the Tiger Ben Army stood on small stools one by one, revealing a small head on the top of the trench.

Underneath the little head, there are thousands of rifles with scopes. Only a huge horn sounded, and the soldiers in the trenches of the Tiger Ben Army opened fire with all their firepower, pouring bullets on the Jiangbei Army exposed on the battlefield.

Seeing the new tricks of the Tiger Ben Army, an exclamation suddenly sounded in the middle of the Jiangbei Army - it turned out that Li Zhi's soldiers were hiding in the trenches and could stick out their heads to fight at a critical moment.

With only one head to shoot like this, it is very difficult for the soldiers of the Jiangbei Army to hit the Tiger Army. Moreover, the Tiger Army was still wearing a steel helmet on its head, and it hit the front of the steel helmet unsteadily, and the bullets of the Jiangbei Army could not kill or injure the Tiger Army soldiers at all.

The soldiers of the Jiangbei Army on the battlefield were attacked at a distance of 400 meters. In the huge stragglers, from time to time, soldiers were knocked down by the rifles of the Tiger Army.