"As mentioned earlier, the key to the unstoppability of the Chinese army lies in their strong firepower, especially artillery fire. The breech mortar www.biquge.info is a little easier to do, the kind of field gun with a long range has not yet been captured, so there is no way to imitate it, so you can only find a way to improve the French Schneider 75mm field gun, which is much more difficult. I am afraid that in a short period of time it will be very difficult for us to close this gap, so we can only try to weaken this advantage of the enemy so that it cannot be fully utilized, and we can also increase our chances of victory. I and several staff officers have improved the existing trench defense system, which has a better protective effect against the Chinese breech mortar with curved ballistics and extremely fast rate of fire, and should be able to reduce casualties by half, or at least one-third, in positional warfare, and hope that it can be popularized as soon as possible. Pershing's words lifted Theodore Roosevelt's spirits, but then there was something that made him even more happy, "But strengthening the fortifications is only a passive approach after all, and we need to be more proactive in order to fundamentally turn the situation around." ”

"Be proactive? You mean trying to sneak up on the enemy's artillery positions? Isn't that easy? Theodore Roosevelt, although he was also an expert, could not always guess what Pershing wanted to say, and the latter could only disclose the answer himself, "It is indeed not easy...... Of course, the threat of Chinese artillery is due to the excellent hard indicators such as range and rate of fire, but the most terrifying thing about them is that they can be fired from a position that our artillery cannot see and hit accurately. ”

"You mean a school shot?" President Roosevelt finally understood, and his eyes lit up.

"That's right, it's a school shot!" However, this time Pershing did not wait for Mr. President to think, but gave the answer himself, "The Chinese army's calibration completely relies on observation balloons in the air, as long as we can knock the balloons off, they have to rely on the observation of ground personnel if they want to complete the calibration firing." However, the ground personnel can only help to complete the calibration of the artillery bombardment against the forward positions, and they cannot reach the long-range artillery positions at least 5 kilometers away from the front line of fire. And without the help of calibration, even if the Chinese artillery can deduce the approximate direction of the artillery position according to our artillery bombardment, it is always only the approximate direction, whether the shelling has hit, how much it has deviated if it has not hit, and how much effect it has achieved if it hit, they can't know it at the first time, as long as we arrange the gun positions to disperse a little to avoid serial explosions, we can ensure that even if we are hit by the enemy's long-range artillery, our long-range heavy artillery can still keep a considerable number, so that when the enemy launches an attack, Our cannons can make them taste great! ”

"That's right, even if our artillery is far inferior to the Chinese in terms of performance, it can still inflict great damage on enemy infantry in an unprotected charge! Not only that, if the Chinese have no balloons and we still have air troops, we can complete the guidance of long-range artillery, even if the performance of the artillery has not caught up with the Chinese goods for the time being, the effective range has actually surpassed the enemy, in that case, the entire battle situation can be reversed! Theodore Roosevelt enthused, and it was only by this time that his confidence in the United States winning the war finally became unwavering. As for how to deal with the observation balloon, this is not a problem, because the balloon is too slow, too big, and too fragile, and the reason why there was no weapon specifically for balloons in the past, but no one thought of doing it, Roosevelt only had a little turn of his mind and had a solution.

And Pershing naturally thought earlier, "We can equip the airship with a machine gun and specialize in hunting balloons, considering the load and endurance, it is better to introduce German hard airships; In addition, it was possible to organize machine-gun and machine-gun anti-aircraft fire. ”

"It's a good idea." Theodore Roosevelt nodded in approval, but as a leader, he still had to show his foresight, so he added, "But with China's level of science and technology, it may not be difficult to form its own airship troops, and their airships may be faster and higher than ours, in that case, our airships are out of reach, machine guns, and even machine guns, and the problem will come back." Therefore, I thought, should we design a special artillery that can fight higher and have better accuracy? ”

"What a great idea, Mr. President! Since it's a balloon, let's call it a balloon cannon! Pershing praised very happily, "With the balloon cannon, even if China can develop a new airship that is more advanced than the German goods, it is impossible for their long-range artillery to fight us like now." ”

"The target is an airship, maybe there will be other flying objects in the future, it may not be appropriate to call it a balloon cannon, let's call it an 'anti-aircraft gun'!" Theodore Roosevelt smiled somewhat proudly, but he never imagined that he would be a prophecy......

Even if a way is thought of to weaken the Chinese army's weapon superiority, imitation weapons are still very necessary, and to imitate must first get the real thing, for this reason, the "Pershing Report" also specifically analyzed the difficulty of capturing complete weapons and equipment and catching alive under various tactics, and finally came to the conclusion that the key lies in "initiative" and "surprise", for which President Pershing suggested that President Roosevelt could allow the troops on the front line to take the initiative to abandon some secondary areas that are not of strategic significance to lure the enemy into depth, so as to facilitate the creation of ambush warfare and annihilation warfare.

"No matter how difficult the conditions are, we must fight more wars of annihilation, because only a war of annihilation can truly destroy the living forces of the Chinese army, and if we are not capable of annihilating a brigade, we will take the regiment as the goal, if this cannot be done, then we will strive to pursue the total annihilation of a battalion or even a company, which is more meaningful than repelling a division in positional warfare!" Pershing's words were endorsed by Theodore Roosevelt, who later advocated them in the army, causing even more trouble for the Chinese army than before. As the U.S. military finally captured a complete set of Chinese weapons to imitate, captured Chinese prisoners of war, and learned more about the tactics of the Chinese Army, the gap in combat effectiveness between the two sides began to narrow rapidly......

However, that is later, and the United States is still in a deep predicament at present, because even if it is to imitate and produce the easiest submachine guns, if it wants to equip a large number of troops and form combat effectiveness, it will have to wait at least three months, and the Chinese army, which is full of momentum, will not stop the pace of attack to give the United States a chance to breathe...... (To be continued.) )