Sherman was actually cautious enough, and the countermeasures were quite in place, after finding out that the cavalry regiment on the reconnaissance mission was quickly annihilated, although there were still many doubts, he still decisively gave up continuing to advance, and chose to defend the whole army on the spot.

However, the two armies are facing each other, which is the same as two people fighting, if the difference in strength is too great, then no matter how careful you are, it is useless.

In the current situation, Sherman's 30,000 troops have a number, but there is a difference of two centuries between their weapons and equipment and Li Yongji's troops, and this kind of technological generation gap cannot be made up for by the number of people, not to mention that the number of Li Yongji's troops is not much less than that of Sherman's troops.

Just when all Sherman's troops turned into a defensive posture and began to wait for the battle, Li Yongji's motorized troops launched a straggler front on their own, and all of them rushed to Sherman's temporary defensive position without any scruples in motor vehicles.

As the convoy approached, the smoke and dust kicked up became heavier and heavier, and even when the convoy was less than five kilometers close to Sherman's corps, the roar of the engines of the entire convoy had been transmitted to the front of the line, making the defending American soldiers also start to get nervous.

However, just as Sherman's soldiers were staring closely at the convoy and smoke in front of them, and began to prepare for battle, a sudden scream was heard, and then the Sherman's defensive position was seen rumbling and exploding, and the entire defensive position became a piece, causing heavy casualties to the soldiers who were not prepared in advance.

It is clear that this was an artillery bombardment, and it was from a distance of five kilometers, and as for the weapons that provided the shelling, it was the Type 93 60-mm mortar, the Type 75 105-mm recoilless gun and the Type 63 107-mm self-propelled rocket launcher.

As mentioned above, the Dream Division is a four-regiment motorized infantry division, and in order to facilitate supply and pursue mobility, it implements an independent combat regiment policy.

That is, before equipping the armored battalion, the establishment and armament of the four regiments were basically the same. Not to mention light weapons, artillery units with heavy firepower are all deployed at the regimental and division levels, and there is no separate artillery directly under the division.

Also for the convenience of supply and mobility, coupled with factors such as cost factors and ease of operation, Li Yongji did not pursue large-caliber and long-range as before, and the artillery prepared for the Dream Division was some mortars, recoilless guns and rocket artillery.

Each company will prepare a 60mm mortar squad, and this mortar squad is equipped with a Type 93 60mm mortar. There is a Thunder off-road vehicle as an artillery vehicle, and a truck as an attached ammunition vehicle, that is, a mortar squad consisting of a Thunder off-road vehicle and a Thunder truck.

At the battalion level, an artillery platoon directly under the battalion will be set up, and an artillery platoon will have four artillery squads, each of which will be an artillery squad. All have a Thunder off-road vehicle equipped with a Type 75 105mm recoilless gun, and an ammunition truck converted from a Thunder truck, that is, an artillery platoon directly under a battalion consists of four Type 75 105mm recoilless guns.

And when it came to the regimental level. There will also be a separate artillery battery, which will be equipped with a total of 12 Type 63 107mm self-propelled rocket launchers and 24 ammunition trucks.

Among them, the Type 63 107mm self-propelled rocket launcher is actually the Type 63 107mm 12-barreled rocket launcher mounted on the Thunder Dragon military card with a high chassis. This famous 12-barrel rocket launcher can be fired both from a vehicle and detached for firing, increasing mobility. So it became self-propelled rocket artillery.

And because the rocket launches quickly and the ammunition consumption is strict, a 107 self-propelled rocket artillery vehicle will be followed by two ammunition trucks, which are also Thunder Dragon military cards.

For the sake of safety, one ammunition truck is equipped with 180 107-mm rockets, that is, one ammunition truck can provide a 12-barreled self-propelled rocket launcher with ammunition for firing 15 rounds of salvos, and the two vehicles together can provide 30 rounds of salvo.

Of course, this is brought with the vehicle, and if necessary, Li Yongji can also increase the ammunition ration at any time, but normally speaking, thirty rounds, one round brought by the rocket artillery vehicle itself in time, is enough to cope with the peacetime war situation.

Later, Li Yongji formed a special armored battalion in the guard regiment, which was equipped with a lot of VN2 six-wheeled armored vehicles, which became the first heavy unit directly under the division.

Among them, the self-propelled artillery with the VN2 wheeled combat vehicle as the chassis and equipped with a 120-mm self-propelled mortar can be regarded as taking on the responsibility of the division's heavy artillery, but due to the small number, it is at most a heavy artillery company.

Later, Li Yongji built a lot of VN1 wheeled combat vehicles, the original first armored battalion was split into three companies and assigned to the three regiments below, while the troops equipped with VN1 were equipped with the second special armored battalion, the so-called guards armored battalion. Since there were two 122-mm wheeled self-propelled howitzers in the Guards Panzer Battalion, the caliber of the artillery directly under the division became 122-mm self-propelled howitzers, which, in terms of size, remained a company.

In other words, today's Dream Division actually has many large-caliber artillery, but the shells of large-caliber artillery are very expensive and not cost-effective, so this shelling did not use these 105, 120 or 122 caliber heavy guns, but only 60 mm mortars, 105 mm recoilless guns, and 107 mm rocket artillery.

Although it is not necessary to use heavy artillery, the power of 60mm mortars, 105mm recoilless guns and 107mm rocket artillery is also quite good, plus the number of artillery pieces is large, the rate of fire is fast, the firing range is also long, the firing distance is within five kilometers, and the accuracy is enough, so just the first round of artillery fire is a kind of full fire coverage.

During this period, ordinary land artillery had a range of more than 600 meters, and it was rare to fire at a distance of one kilometer, and it was even more impossible to fire at a distance of five kilometers, so most of Sherman's infantry were defenseless before the shelling, let alone anti-artillery holes, and many people did not even have the concept of lying down.

Because most of the people are standing honestly, and the number of people is relatively dense, so the coverage effect of this dense artillery fire is quite good, just one round of artillery fire, more than 1,000 people were killed and wounded, and at least one battalion was lost!

This is also due to the fact that the width of Sherman's troop formation is large, if the width is small. The more dense the crowd, the more terrible the casualties may be.

But the problem is that there will not be only one round of this shelling, but many rounds!

The reloading speed of rocket artillery may be slow, but the loading speed of mortars and recoilless guns is quite fast, so in the later rounds of artillery bombardment, although there is a lack of rocket artillery, mortars and recoilless guns still bombard, although there is no rocket artillery shooting that bombards a piece, but because of the large number of artillery. It's also quite spectacular to blow up.

In short, while Li Yongji led the assault troops to continue to advance, the artillery behind kept pouring artillery fire on Sherman's sniper troops. This kind of artillery fire is not a solid shell, but a high-explosive shell with a fairly large killing radius, and it kills a piece when it explodes.

Li Yongji, who found that the Americans in front of him had been hit quite badly by the artillery fire, and had already wavered, and had been exposing his upper body to the armored vehicle so that he could better observe the enemy's situation, immediately connected to the channel of the whole army: "The enemy has begun to waver, quickly." Quick, speed up, don't care if the formation is not in formation, it's still the same. All the assault vehicles form a two-car formation with the neighboring vehicles nearby, and then use the two-car formation as the basic unit, and rush up with maximum speed for me to have a free assault! ”

Assault vehicles here. Not specifically paratrooper assault vehicles, but also assault armored vehicles, on the contrary. Those military trucks, support vehicles with artillery on board, and other support vehicles, were left behind.

The reason for this is to maximize the assault capability of one's own side, so as not to let the artillery vehicles follow as a burden.

As for the order of free assault, it was inspired by the previous attack on the opponent's cavalry, and in that skirmish, Li Yongji found that his previous tactics were too conservative, and he even used the troops equipped with modern weapons to apply the tactics of modern warfare, and was completely unable to give full play to his own technical superiority and firepower superiority.

You must know that in modern warfare, due to the popularization of rapid-fire weapons and the enhancement of mobility and communication capabilities, it is difficult for war to have a large-scale face-to-face war like before World War II.

After breaking into the opponent's camp, they will take advantage of the characteristics of small units and strong power, firepower, and communication ability to wreak havoc inside the enemy, so that the enemy is also forced to disperse and cannot assemble smoothly, so as to fight chaos with chaos and cause greater lethal effects.

This kind of tactic, which is not strict on the number of its own side, but has strict requirements for quality, is a typical tactic of winning by quality, and is essentially an alternative blitzkrieg.

In the face of this tactic, you must curb the opponent's speed, and to curb the opponent's speed, you must first stop the opponent's attack, if you can't curb the opponent's attack and speed, then no matter how many people you have, you can only deal with it passively.

If this situation is said to be martial arts, it is the world's martial arts, only fast and unbreakable. Since the Dream Division is a fully motorized army, the attack speed is faster than the cavalry, and the firepower is extremely powerful, so it is purely to play positional warfare in a position like before.

Of course, if the other party has a large number of trenches and barbed wire or something, it is reasonable to play a conservative game, but according to Li Yongji's observation, the other party did not do this, at most dug a few half-man-high earthen walls as a defensive position for musketeers and artillery, and there were no trenches!

Such a simple defensive position was completely vulnerable in front of Li Yongji's motorized troops, and in addition to the fact that the opposite side was already covered by their own artillery fire, the whole line began to waver, and some people had already begun to flee, so there was no need to worry.

After the order to assault at full speed was given, the convoy, which was originally still maintained at 20 kilometers per hour, soared rapidly, and many light assault vehicle groups soared to 50 kilometers per hour at once, and even armored vehicles basically reached a speed of 35 kilometers per hour.

Of course, this is also related to the fact that the road ahead is relatively flat grass, and if it is potholes, the speed will never be increased.

What's more, the assault force with three large arrows came to a range of less than three kilometers from the Sherman Corps, and when it reached this distance, the armored vehicles stopped one after another, and then strafed with the 30-mm machine guns on the vehicles, joining the ranks covered by artillery fire, which was equivalent to adding some fire density to their own side.

Unlike the curved artillery fire in the rear, the 30-mm guns on the armored vehicles were mostly direct fire, and most of their targets were aimed at the enemy's artillery positions, in order to completely destroy these only threats to their own side. Even if these artillery positions have been wheeled by rear fire several times before, and they have been bombed miserably, it is still necessary to use machine guns to rotate again, just in case.

At this moment, even if the artillery positions arranged in front of the Sherman Corps were completely paralyzed, they waited for the assault troops of the Dream Division to come to them, and they did not fire a single shot, obviously they had been destroyed long ago.

The Americans cannot be blamed, because at this time most of the artillery of the Americans was a front-loading field gun like the Napoleonic gun, which had a limited firing range. The firing height is also limited, and most of them are used as direct visual fire, so most of them are placed in the first row of lines, and even if they are placed behind, there will definitely be a free passage in front of the artillery, so as not to accidentally injure their own soldiers when the artillery fires.

In addition, the target of the artillery is quite obvious, so these places are the focus of the Dream Division, as early as the first round of shelling, many artillery pieces are rushing to these American artillery positions. The next few rounds of artillery bombardment were almost mostly near the artillery positions of the Americans, and the later machine guns fired at close range, even if they could not completely destroy the opponent's artillery, at least the opponent could not open fire.

In a word. This kind of artillery attack of the Dream Division, in terms of firepower density, has greatly exceeded the times, if you have to compare it. Then the firepower coverage of the Dream Division basically reached the artillery attack of more than 30 corps of the US army.

You know, in the Battle of Gettysburg on this plane. It is the largest battle between the North and the South so far, and in that battle, the Southern Alliance Army has a total of 260 artillery pieces, if you count the rate of fire and power of the artillery, then the power of these 260 guns is far inferior to the artillery of the Dream Division, and in terms of the effect of the shelling, it is not even a third.

And in the Battle of Gettysburg in this time and space, the Union Army invested 90,000 people, if it was only a third, then if it was to reach the artillery power of the Dream Division, it would be at least 300,000 people. At this time, the establishment of the federal army is generally 10,000 people is an army, so this artillery bombardment is equivalent to the artillery attack of 30 armies, which is not an exaggeration.

Sherman's army was only 30,000 men, a reinforced army, about the size of an ordinary three armies, and it was quite commendable that it was now under the fire of thirty armies and did not collapse immediately.

Of course, it is not so much that Sherman's troops are resolute in their will to fight, but rather that they are blinded by the dense artillery fire, and they have no idea what to do next, and almost all of them have become headless flies, and many people do not even think of escaping, and most of them subconsciously crouch down or lie down to avoid the terrifying artillery attack.

That is to say, except for the first shelling that caught the Americans off guard and made the Americans have no time to dodge in the first place, then as the shelling progresses, even if they have not learned how to dodge the shelling before, their survival instinct will tell them what is the most appropriate method, so lying down and looking for cover have become the consensus of everyone.

From this point of view, Li Yongji's artillery actually went too far, and if they weakened the density of their firepower a little and didn't hit the artillery so fiercely, perhaps the other side would have collapsed.

In this kind of overwhelming shelling, which seemed to have no end to all, Major General Sherman, as a general, was also lying on the ground tightly like other ordinary infantry at this time, letting the dirt stain his handsome and straight general's uniform, and he didn't care about any image or image.

After a while, the intensity of the shelling finally weakened, which also relieved the American officers and soldiers on the positions a little.

"Damn, this cannon is finally over!" Sherman, who had just gotten up from the ground, had red eyes, had lost his previous calm, and yelled at the people around him, "Can the Chinese already be so extravagant?" How many shells does this cost? Did they bring in all the artillery of China?

No, it can't be like this, come on, hurry up and organize the retreat of the troops, we must withdraw from this damn place and reorganize the defense!

No, we can't defend, we have to attack, we must keep attacking, in order to avoid this situation where we can only be beaten and cannot fight back! ”

As soon as Sherman said this, Smith, who was not far away, suddenly shouted, "Look, ironclad! ”

With Smith's shout, Sherman was stunned for a moment, then turned his head sharply, and saw the scene ahead.

It turned out that in just such a short time, the Chinese paratrooper assault convoy had broken through to less than 400 meters from the front line of the US army.

Most of these paratrooper assault vehicles are two vehicles side by side, forming a two-vehicle formation, and each two-vehicle formation is in between. There is a considerable spacing, and on average, the distance between each formation is at least more than five meters, and some even reach more than ten meters, which can be said to be quite loose.

The distance of 400 meters is not the effective firing distance of the US muskets, but it is already the effective firing distance of the artillery, but it is a pity that it has been covered by the overwhelming and dazzling artillery fire just now. Not to mention anything else, at least all the artillery positions on the American front have been completely destroyed.

That is, in the face of the Chinese soldiers at a distance of four hundred meters, the Sherman regiment had no effective means of counterattack.

Although it is not known why the Chinese attacking troops stopped at a distance of four hundred meters, and it is not known why the opposing artillery stopped shelling, this situation is obviously very abnormal.

"They must be out of shells, yes, it must be!" Sherman's aide-de-camp, George, shouted for the first time.

"Damn it. Can't go on like this! Sherman, who realized that the situation was not good, immediately decided, "Send the order, send a signal immediately, and the whole army will assault!" We have to take the initiative. You have to fight with the other party, so that the opponent can't shoot safely. Hurry up, immediately, right away! ”

"Yes. Checkmate! George, who was covered in dust, didn't talk nonsense anymore and immediately obeyed orders.

At this time, the command system of the US military was still quite primitive. Since there is no radio system, flags, whistles and flare guns can only be used to direct the unified action of the troops, and this method naturally cannot be finely commanded.

Soon, George and another guard each picked up an oversized flare gun and fired two flares into the sky.

Limited by the technical level of love in this era, the flare gun at this time was not a pistol, but a front-loading rifle similar to the Springfield rifle, except that the barrel caliber was large, and the flare inside was not aluminum powder, but a mixture of black powder and potassium chlorate.

The luminous effect of this flare can only be said to be very average, but the smoke effect is relatively good, so it is not so much to transmit the signal by glowing, but to launch a smoke ball into the sky to transmit the signal.

Because of this, at this time, the armies of various countries generally fight during the day, rarely play night battles at night, and rarely fight in bad weather, in addition to other factors, the poor luminous effect of signal flares is also one of the many reasons.

In the armies of the United States during this period, if the whole army was attacking, it was generally two flares, and if it was a full retreat, most of them were three flares, and the flare guns were mostly in the hands of the commander and were in the hands of the guards.

Now, when the signal flare of the general attack was fired, the Sherman Corps was silent for a while, but soon, the officers at all levels of the company blew the military whistle and urged their troops to attack.

Blowing the whistle is one of the important means of grassroots officers in the Western army, because all kinds of voices on the battlefield are very chaotic, relying on people to shout, the effect is not good, so after 1840, especially after the Crimean War, military posts have become the standard configuration of the Western regular army, and have become a magic weapon for grassroots officers to command troops.

This method of blowing the whistle of grassroots officers continued until World War II, and it is a way of giving orders with a long lifespan, but the whistle is mostly used to urge the troops to attack, and if it is a retreat, the whistle is rarely used to give orders.

In short, when the signal flare was fired and the officers at the grassroots level began to blow their whistles, a large number of soldiers ran out of the positions of the entire Sherman Corps, and then rushed to the Chinese convoy about 400 meters ahead in an irregular formation.

The reason why they can still have the courage to attack, in addition to the fact that they usually train hard and obey orders has become an instinctive reaction, is that they have more or less seen the attack speed of the Chinese before, and know that those strange vehicles in front of them are quite sharp, faster than horses, if they just run away, the consequences will definitely be unimaginable.

Therefore, there is only an attack, everyone is mixed together, and maybe there is a glimmer of life. Of course, in addition, these American GIs were quite unconvinced, they were just bombed before, and they had no chance to shoot or fight face-to-face with Chinese, which made them feel very hurt and emotionally unbearable after they had always looked down on Chinese.

This situation is a bit like being defeated by a black army. Although there were a large number of black soldiers in the army of the United States at this time, they were basically formed separately and were basically not mixed with the white army, and once the white army found out that it was defeated by the blacks, they would often rebel and burst out with stronger combat effectiveness.

So in the past battles, whites fought with whites, although it was also fierce, but it was not a shame to surrender or something, once they fought with the black army, whites would often fight to the death, and basically would not compromise and surrender, the reason is that kind of racial superiority in the bones.

In the same way, in the minds of white Americans, at least so far, they all think that the yellow race in China is an inferior race, on the same level as blacks and Indians, so if the Chinese are inexplicably defeated and flee with a shelling, then it is more or less difficult for them to accept this result.

Therefore, when the Chinese bombardment was over and the commander ordered the whole army to attack, the white officers and soldiers of the United States, who were holding back the fire, plucked up the courage to attack, which was not so much due to the strong will to fight, but because of the unconvincing of the self-esteem of the damaged self-esteem.

However, when they began to roar and launch an attack on all fronts, the strange Chinese who had stopped moving forward moved again.

This time, it was not artillery fire that washed the floor, but machine-gun strafing, which was an unknown number of machine gun strafing!

In an instant, countless tongues of fire shot out of the Chinese's paratrooper assault vehicles, each with at least five tongues of fire, the reason why they were tongues of fire, of course, was caused by a large number of tracer bullets mixed in the ammunition of these machine guns and assault rifles.

The purpose of adding tracer bullets to the ammunition is to make it easier to correct one's shooting, so that soldiers can use their weapons more effectively and hit more accurately.

With tracer bullets, soldiers can easily spot their own shooting trajectory from tracer bullets, so as to effectively correct themselves and make shooting more effective.

However, this is generally a correction method that will only be used in the case of continuous fire, and if it is a single shot or a point shot, it is generally not corrected without tracer bullets.

And this time, because the number of American troops is far greater than his own, Li Yongji will order to add tracer bullets to the ammunition in advance, usually a tracer bullet behind an ordinary bullet, that is to say, from the beginning, Li Yongji planned to let the soldiers play strafing.

Sure enough, in the frantic strafing of the combat assault vehicles, the attacking American soldiers were swept down one after another, and the countless tongues of fire knocked countless American officers and soldiers to the ground, and pieces of life were harvested by these ruthless tongues of fire.

In the face of countless machine guns and assault rifles, those US officers and soldiers who only had a single shot of front-loading guns could not stop it at all, this was no longer a battle, it was a complete massacre, a bloody massacre!

This one-sided slaughter lasted only ten minutes, and the attacking troops quickly retreated in the face of this cruel fact, and at this moment, no amount of courage could resist the sense of powerlessness and fear, so they collapsed.

However, in the face of the rout of the American soldiers, the Chinese showed no mercy, they started the vehicle, rushed up again, and began the pursuit operation, and in the process of pursuit, their strafing continued to shoot.

Even, many Chinese soldiers had gone crazy at this time, almost all of them were red-eyed, and many even let out unknown screams while shooting, and they had no intention of letting go of the prey in front of them.

In this way, the American soldiers, who were fierce and assaulting a moment ago, became the prey of being chased and hunted at this moment, and there was no suspense in the battle at this time.

At this time, there was no one in the Sherman Corps who could save their fate of defeat, the so-called defeat was like a mountain, nothing more than that, the only thing they needed to consider was how many of them could survive in this battle. (To be continued......)