An hour later, when the last of the Central Asians were driven to the battlefield, Kaufman secretly counted the distance, and suddenly shouted: "Go! ”

The standard-bearer waved his flag and signaled the start of the general attack.

The dense Russian army was five hundred meters behind the Central Asians, covering the artillery and slowly moving forward, in fact, everyone's heart was very worried, although the artillery sound of the Chinese position was already very sparse, but what if?

What's more, the Chinese's guns are very powerful, they can fire more than a dozen rounds per minute, even if there is no artillery cooperation, it will take a lot of money to break through the Chinese's gun formation, but this is not up to them.

Between Hami and Turpan, there are still mountains, and the two places can only go back and forth along the foot of the southern foot of the Tianshan Mountains, which makes Kaufman unable to outflank him, and there is no other way but to attack.

In fact, according to Russia's pre-war goals, the Russian army did not have the need to attack the Hexi Corridor, Hami to take or not, the significance is not very great, it is nothing more than Xinjiang to take a piece less, as long as Turpan is in hand, it is enough to communicate the exchanges between the north and the south of Xinjiang, but the Democratic Alliance army divided troops to surround everywhere, and the Russian army is in danger of being dumplings, it is far from enough to send people to rescue Vilneburg, and it also forces Kaufman to launch an attack on Hami.

The death of Central Asians in pieces was not cared about by Kaufman, but the Russian army went up, Kaufman's heart was also tightly raised, and the telescope was patrolling the positions of the Democratic Alliance Army, and even he could see Wang Feng.

At this moment, Kaufman couldn't wait to have an ultra-long-range gun in his hand and shoot Wang Feng with one shot, but he knew that he could only think about it with confidence, and it took a lot of effort to reluctantly look away and observe the artillery position of the Democratic Alliance.

The artillery was quiet, not even the people who poured snow to cool down, but emitted white smoke in the air. This is the natural reaction of the water stains on the surface of the barrel being vaporized by high temperatures and encountering cold air, which also shows that the artillery of the Democratic Alliance Army can no longer splash snow.

After all, after repeated snow splashing to cool down, the barrel is easy to age and brittle under the sudden cold and heat. At the end of the service life early, many of the barrels at that time were not steel pipes, but cast iron barrels, because the steelmaking method commonly used in Europe was the acid converter steelmaking method, which greatly reduced the cost of steelmaking compared with the traditional crucible steelmaking, and could greatly increase the amount of one-time steelmaking.

But its disadvantages are also obvious, it cannot be dephosphated. Phosphorus is one of the harmful impurities in steel, steel with more phosphorus, when used at room temperature or lower, is easy to brittle, called cold brittleness, the higher the carbon content of the steel, the more serious the brittleness caused by phosphorus.

The phosphorus in pig iron is mainly derived from the phosphate in iron ore. The thermodynamic stability of phosphorus oxide and iron oxide is similar under reduction conditions in blast furnaces. The phosphorus in the charge is almost all reduced and dissolved into molten iron, while iron ore without phosphate is extremely rare, and it is only seen in a few countries such as Sweden and Austria in Europe, which determines that under the technical conditions at that time, the quality of the steel cannon is not as stable as the iron cannon, but the brittleness of cast iron is quite famous. It was also decided that the cast-iron barrel could not withstand too much alternation of hot and cold.

China's wholly-owned steel mills have generally adopted the alkaline converter steelmaking method, that is, the clinker fired at high temperature with dolomite, mixed with tar to make alkaline refractory brick lining, and the air is blown in and quicklime is added during the smelting process. The whole reaction is carried out under alkaline high temperature conditions, and the oxidized phosphorus is combined with lime, which is left in the slag and no longer in the steel body, and the problem of dephosphorization is solved.

As for the more advanced electric furnace steelmaking, it is still in the process of tackling key problems, and the difficulty of tackling key problems does not lie in the electric furnace itself, the principle of the electric furnace is very simple, but in the large-scale generator set with actual use value.

Generators were developed a few years ago, but the cost of power generation is very high, the utilization rate of coal is very unsatisfactory, and too high electricity prices are of no value to promote to society.

In short, the steel is stripped of phosphorus, which naturally reduces the brittleness and increases the toughness, even if it is not alloy steel, the number of times it withstands alternating cold and heat is not comparable to the cast iron cannon, but Kaufman doesn't understand, he takes it for granted that the artillery of the Democratic Alliance Army is really to the limit of use.

Kaufman let out a long sigh, the unusable artillery of the NLD army gave him hope of victory, because without artillery support, what could the NLD army do even if the guns were powerful? No matter how far the gun is, it can hit only a few hundred meters, while the artillery can hit a distance of several kilometers.

The Russian army has about 100 artillery pieces, of which 80% are cast iron cannons, and the other 20% are steel cannons smuggled in from Austria.

Hundreds of thousands of Central Asian armed forces died, although they did not exhaust the ammunition of the Democratic Alliance, but the artillery was dragged to the point of stopping, which can be regarded as a well-deserved death, but Kaufman knew that the process of this stoppage would not be very long, and once it was naturally cooled and cooled, it would reexert its terrifying power.

Staring closely at the white smoke on the barrel of the cannon in the distance, Kaufman shouted: "The herald, the artillery must be put into battle as quickly as possible, not to let the artillery of the Chinese army recover, to be fast, to destroy the Chinese artillery as much as possible with heavy artillery fire." ”

Orders were quickly transmitted to the front, the artillery quickened the pace of their progress, and they understood the importance of racing against time, and only by firing before the NLD forces could the victory be established.

Fortunately, the soft snow has been trampled into hard ice by hundreds of thousands of Central Asians, and the speed has accelerated a lot, and four or five kilometers away from the forward position of the Democratic Alliance Army, nearly 100 artillery pieces have stopped one after another, and they are nervously deployed on the spot.

Under the low temperature conditions of more than ten degrees below zero, modern artillery is easy to malfunction, which is generally related to the fire control system, and the artillery at that time was completely mechanical and manual operation, and the requirements for the environment were not so harsh, and even the low temperature environment was more conducive to artillery operation.

Each artillery, less than a dozen horses, more than dozens of horses, groups of soldiers took the horses away and drove to the back of the battle, and some people struggled to unfold the gun mount, but at this moment, Kaufman's face suddenly changed greatly, and he could see clearly that the soldiers of the Democratic Alliance Army were loading shells into the artillery.

'No, is it really a deception?' Kaufman broke out in a cold sweat, but then reassured himself that it was just a forced opening of artillery by the Chinese army.

As long as the ammunition is not hit, he is not worried about one or two shots, and there are problems with the positioning of the accurate head.

'Bomb, bomb, bomb! Kaufman shouted in his heart, and he was anxious that the artillery in his army was so slow to deploy, you know, in an artillery battle, the one who fired first naturally had an advantage.

Just over ten seconds later, a deafening loud sound sounded, and tongues of fire bloomed from the positions of the Democratic Alliance forces, and hundreds of light spots fell near the positions of the Russian artillery.

A series of explosions was also a series of fires, and the smoke and fire obscured the vision, and Kaufman's heart was tugging.

Immediately afterward, a second round of shells hit, which brought Kaufman's heart and liver to his throat, but he still forced his composure, observing the artillery positions of the Democratic Union, and was extremely expectant that the fire would suddenly burst out and the cannon would explode.

To his disappointment, there was no fire anywhere else except the fire from the muzzle, but what made him even more horrified was that the third round of shells came again, and the fact was already obvious that the artillery of the Democratic Alliance Army had no problem at all, and it was completely deliberate to stop firing, just to induce himself to take the initiative to attack, and he thought that he was in control of everything like a fool.

"No!" Kaufman roared heartbreakingly, he knew that the artillery was finished, and the end of the artillery also meant the end of the nearly 400,000 army, it was hard to imagine that relying purely on infantry and without artillery support would be the opponent of the Chinese army with a terrifying number of artillery, and even surviving was a luxury.

The artillery position became a sea of fire, and the fireballs kept blooming in the sea of fire, and the raging fire and violent explosions broke the Russian offensive team into two, and the rear stopped moving, and the front was terrified.

On the contrary, the Central Asians who are not dead see this scene, but they laugh happily, this is retribution, it is worth it to drag the Russian army as a backstop.

Kaufman was dumbfounded, the bright flames tearing his soul apart, he knew that the battle had been lost, that he had personally buried half a million expeditionary troops, that he would be the sinner of the Russian Empire, that decades of fame would be wasted, that he would be disgraced for the rest of his life, and that he would be tried by a court-martial, until he was torn to pieces by the angry populace.

"Your Excellency the Governor, withdraw your troops!" One of the staff officers also shouted in despair.

"No!" Kaufman jerked out his gun and pointed it at his temple.

"Your Excellency the Governor, you can't die!" The left and right people hurriedly hugged Kaufman and forcibly snatched the gun away.

Kaufman lost his soul and said: "I'm sorry for His Majesty the Tsar, I'm sorry for the Russian people, I'm sorry for the dead lads, I don't have the face to go back to St. Petersburg." ”

Another staff officer hurriedly persuaded: "Your Excellency the Governor, we still have more than 300,000 troops, even if we lose our artillery, we must not give up lightly, even if Xinjiang cannot be held in the end, you have the responsibility to take us out of Xinjiang." ”

"If you die, our army will be in chaos at once, and you must also live for the sake of our warriors."

"General Vyazevsky should be at war with the Chinese, in the cold winter, we Russians have a natural advantage, and I am sure that soon there will be good news."

"Not bad, not bad, if the Chinese artillery is captured, won't our losses be compensated?"

The people around him talked and persuaded him, and Kaufman's eyes gradually became a little brighter, yes, if he lost the artillery, although the situation would be extremely disadvantageous, there was still hope for Vyazelsky all the way, and there was still a chance to turn defeat into victory.

"Retreat, retreat! Hold on to Turpan! Kaufman shouted. (To be continued.) )