At the mouth of the Yangtze River on June 10, more than 200 ships were crowded on the river, and in front of and near the shore were the warships of the British and French fleets, and the leading ones were several large professional warships, namely the Calcutta, the Incitement, the Avenger, the Kokang, and other large warships with more than 50 guns, and they formed a column close to the Wusong Fort.

When the shore defense guns on the Wusong Fort opened fire on them, they also used the broadside guns to carry out intensive shelling of the Wusong Fort.

In just half an hour, the heavy artillery of both sides was already fully engaged in the battle, and more than 200 guns on both sides combined were engaged in the most intensive artillery bombardment.

Many grenades fired from the Wusong Fort first flew into the sky, and then stirred up a column of water on the river, and from time to time there were shells falling in the fleet of the British and French forces, after the shells exploded, they could always set off a bloody storm, thanks to the continuous improvement of the grenade fuse technology of the Linde Machinery Factory, at present, the Chinese army, whether it is the army or the navy, has widely used grenades, and now the artillery bombardment of the British and French forces, these large-caliber naval guns, In particular, the shells fired by the rear-loading rifled gun, which was the main force, were all conical high-explosive shells.

While the shore defense artillery on the Wusong Fort continued to fire shells, many shells also flew from the river and smashed on the Wusong Fort.

There are solid shells and grenades, and the power of the shells fired by these heavy naval guns, whether they are solid ball shells or grenades, is not comparable to the army's 12-pound, 9-pound, and 6-pound field guns.

The solid-ball shells fired by the main naval guns of the Anglo-French army, the 32-pounder smoothbore cannons, were huge, and the huge iron balls smashed over. Even if it is smashed on the outer wall of the fort, it can smash a large area of the outer wall of the masonry. If it is smashed on a gun emplacement above the turret, a single shell can destroy the entire gun emplacement.

Fortunately, when the Wusong Fort was built, he did not cut corners. In addition to the outer walls of the battery, each of its guns had several meters of fortifications in front of it, which was effective enough to withstand the bombardment of those solid ball shells.

Compared with the seemingly powerful solid-ball shells, those grenades are actually a huge threat to the Chinese army's coastal defense artillery.

You must know that these batteries can be regarded as open-air batteries, and there is no way for anyone to make these artillery pieces so huge, and it is impossible to engage in any concealed gun emplacements, as for the army used to prefer to use wooden pillars as supports, and cover them with wooden planks and sandstone anti-artillery holes, this kind of simple fortifications still have a certain effect on guarding against grenade shotguns. But it is not very useful when it comes to solid-ball shells and grenades.

Moreover, these spilled anti-artillery fortifications can be easily destroyed, and when the time comes, these scattered sands and wooden blocks everywhere will be a serious threat to the artillery.

Therefore, in the construction of the fort, the military simply canceled the so-called anti-artillery hole overhead, and directly used the gun emplacement in the open air.

To compensate, a shield several meters thick was built in front of the gun, and a long semicircular shield was built on the left and right sides of the gun to reduce the damage of fragments after the grenade exploded.

Under the protection of the shield, these gun emplacements actually formed a kind of semi-buried artillery layout, which was concealed by itself and the height difference between the battery and the river surface. It was quite difficult for the warships on the river to accurately hit the artillery itself.

However, even if the hit rate is a little low, but the British and French forces are shelling nearly 200 guns together, no matter how it is, it is impossible not to hit a little.

Soon, a huge grenade landed accurately on the emplacement of a 64-pounder front-loading gun on the turret. After a loud bang, white smoke rose up, and several screams came from the white smoke.

After the river breeze blew away the white smoke, I saw that the sixty-four-pound front-loading gun had nothing to do. The gun mount did not even move, but the artillerymen who operated the gun suffered heavy casualties. The ground was in shambles, and a dozen soldiers were lying on the ground. Several were already mutilated, and several were howling in pain.

This situation was seen by a lieutenant colonel wearing a navy navy navy uniform and white gloves at the back, and after seeing him frown slightly, he said flatly: "Let the substitute artillery team go up, and the medical soldiers will bring the wounded down!" ”

After giving the order in a flat tone, the lieutenant colonel turned his gaze to the other gun emplacements and gave orders from time to time.

"Let the No. 6 artillery slow down the shelling speed, and if you continue to fight at such a high intensity, it will be easy to have an accident!" The lieutenant commander looked at the six-six-four-pounder gun in front of him and said with a frown.

These soldiers are still too immature, this artillery battle has just begun, and it is easy to overheat the barrel if you fight so quickly now, and if you continue like this, it will easily become a bombardment, even if you don't blow up the barrel, but after high-intensity shooting, the heated barrel will completely cool down and be quite slow.

Therefore, in a long-term artillery battle, it is very important to maintain a stable rate of fire, not slowly, because slow means that the amount of ammunition projected is insufficient, but it cannot be fast, because it will explode if it is fast.

A large-scale artillery battle like today's is not over in a minute, or even an hour or two, it is a protracted war, and it is very normal to fight an artillery battle with each other for three or five days, so the frequency of artillery fire must be strictly controlled.

After braving the shells of the local artillery shells, the lieutenant colonel soon went to the observation platform in the center of the battery, where Rear Admiral Su Xuanbin, commander of the Wusong Fort Fortress Force, was in command.

After entering the observation platform, the young lieutenant colonel first saluted a standard military salute, and at this time, Rear Admiral Su Xuanbin also turned around: "Oh, Lieutenant Colonel Liao is back, how is the situation, is the third artillery battalion okay?" ”

Liao Yizhai immediately said aloud: "Tell the commander, everything is in good condition on the side of the Third Artillery Battalion, and all artillery groups are maintaining stable shelling according to the predetermined plan!" ”

Su Xuanbin nodded and said: "Well, that's good, the brothers of the Third Artillery Battalion are all recruits, and their training in all aspects may not be as good as the veterans of the First and Second Artillery Battalions, Lieutenant Colonel Liao, you have to pay more attention, you can't panic first!" ”

Liao Yizhai said: "Commander, rest assured, there is a department." There will be no problems with the 3rd Artillery Battalion! ”

However, Liao Yizhai said so, but he was a little worried in his heart. Liao Yizhai was not the battalion commander of the Third Artillery Battalion, he was the deputy director of the Artillery Department of the Admiralty. Because the defense of southern Jiangsu was tight, and the navy had fully retreated to the Yangtze River, to be precise, the Yangtze River west of Jiangyin, and in the later operation, it was impossible for the navy to engage ships with the huge British and French fleet, and the navy's main combat mission was to be responsible for the defense of the batteries of the two fortresses of Wusong and Jiangyin.

For this reason, the navy has even dismantled the naval guns on the capital ships and moved the naval guns to the batteries, and even the 180-millimeter main guns on the new flagship of the navy, the Shaoxing, have been dismantled and installed on the Jiangyin batteries.

Under this background, he, the deputy director in charge of naval artillery work, was also temporarily transferred to Wusong Fortress. Served as a temporary artillery staff officer.

In fact, not only him, in fact, in addition to him, most of the naval officers who are now commanding the artillery bombardment operations in the Wusong Fort are temporarily transferred, such as the battalion commanders of several artillery battalions, in fact, they are all the gunners of the previous capital ships, there is no way that the navy of the Chinese Empire is already small, and the quality requirements for personnel are much higher than those of the army, which also leads to the fact that the officers in the navy, especially the technical officers, are very scarce.

Nowadays, the main warships in the navy are doing nothing in the rear. Even the naval guns were dismantled, and the elite officers on them were naturally drawn out, mainly flooding the Wusong Fort and Jiangyin Fort to direct the heavy artillery on the fort against the British and French forces.

Liao Yizhai is one of them. He is currently serving as an artillery staff officer under Su Xuanbin, mainly responsible for the operational affairs of the 3rd Artillery Battalion.

The 3rd Artillery Battalion had six 64-pounder front-loading smoothbore guns and twelve 32-pounder front-loading smoothbore guns, but these shore defense artillery belonged to the navy. This is different from the Army, which is a standard company of six guns. Three artillery batteries, that is, eighteen guns, make up an artillery battalion.

However, there is no classification of artillery batteries or artillery platoons on the naval side, which is the same as naval artillery even if it is shore defense artillery. The Third Artillery Battalion was under the direct jurisdiction of eighteen artillery pieces, each of which was a unit.

Unlike the first and second artillery battalions, which are equipped with breech-loading rifled guns, the gunners attached to the battalion are also elite gunners who have been trained by the Navy for many years.

The artillery is old, and the artillery is mostly new, so it is not easy to bring into play the combat effectiveness of the third artillery battalion!

What's more, he also heard that when Bing Qusong and others from the army watched the navy's live-fire exercise a few days ago, they were not very satisfied with the navy's artillery skills, and they said on the spot: Our army still has some artillery talents, do you want to seconded a few to help you build up these artillery battalions! ”

Speaking of artillery, although the navy looks down on the army, to be honest, if the gun position is fixed and the target is still fixed, the army's artillery level is actually higher than that of the navy, why?

Because the navy has been established on a small scale, except for those small gunboats that have participated in a few support artillery operations, most of the artillery has carried out some large-scale artillery battles, at most they have occasionally conducted live-fire exercises, but the army has been fighting every day in the southern and northern wars, and there will be artillery in every battle.

Speaking of artillery experience, the Navy is really inferior to the Army.

Su Xuanbin, the person in charge of the navy at that time, that is, the commander of Wusong Fortress, said with a red face: "Thank you for the kindness of your army colleagues, this heavy artillery is very different from field artillery, even if you seconded your army colleagues, it is difficult to solve!" ”

At that time, Bing Qusong also smiled and did not continue.

However, this incident actually caused a lot of shock to those naval officers, the navy's artillery is actually much better than the army in terms of quantity and caliber, but there are few artillery talents who can handle it, and even skilled artillery has to draw artillery from active warships, and the short-term large increase in artillery can only be filled with new recruits.

Now, if the performance of the Third Artillery Battalion is not good, I am afraid that the army group will see it and talk nonsense, and at that time, Liao Yizhai, as the direct person in charge of the Third Artillery Battalion, may not be able to do well, at least Su Xuanbin and other high-ranking naval officials who have lost face by the army will not have any good influence on themselves.

With these messy thoughts in his mind, Liao Yizhai left the observation platform, he wanted to return to the third artillery battalion and continue to supervise the operations of the various artillery positions. (To be continued......)