. Chapter 290: Myth Busting (9)

On the clear Taizi River, the once busy mineral sands transport fleet is no longer visible, and two gray-painted gunboats on the river near the town of Linjiatai are quietly bathed in the sun.

Captain Komatsu leaned lazily against the railing, and at his feet was a river gunboat with two 120-mm guns and two 76-mm guns. Although this small warship can only be regarded as a second-class gunboat in the powerful Japanese Navy, it is a symbol of naval glory! Because it was captured from the Russians seven years ago. Also in front of it was a second-class gunboat, the Uji, built in 1903 at the Kure Port Shipyard with four Armstrong 76mm/L40 guns. The normal work of the two ships is to guard northeastern China, northern Korea, and the Yalu River.

The sailor leaned over: "Captain, I heard that this river was named in honor of the Manchu prince?" ”

The learning atmosphere of the navy is much higher than that of the army, so the soldiers also like to discuss strange problems, Komatsu has become accustomed to this, and he very much agrees that this is a progressive phenomenon, and said with a smile: "It's not the prince of the Manchus, it's the prince Dan of the Yan State during the Warring States period of China thousands of years ago." ”

"Thousands of years ago?"

"Yes, this country has a history far older than ours, and the Yamato nation also drew nutrients from it to get to where it is today, hundreds of years ago, after the fall of the Southern Song Dynasty, our country hoped to save it, but the national strength was not strong at that time."

"But we can now." The sailor said proudly, because he believed that Japan was the strongest at present, and could fully shoulder the responsibility of co-prosperity in Asia. Komatsu smiled and didn't comment, but he knew in his heart that this answer was in turmoil: "Okay, let's go and prepare, I don't want to look at the faces of those Changzhou clans anymore." "Komatsu, who was born in the Satsuma Domain, also hated the army on the shore and wanted to leave early.

But at this moment, the army artillery positions deployed not far from the shore were in chaos, and after a few moments, shells burst out of the barrels and flew several kilometers away. "What's going on?" While Komatsu was still surprised, the observer at the top of the mast began to shout, "Captain, the Shina army is here." ”

When Komatsu quickly boarded the bridge and saw an explosion rumbling on the horizon several kilometers away, and was considering whether to provide fire support for the army, so as not to cause the army's saliva after returning, two sparrow reconnaissance planes had already flown over the gunboat and began to circle.

"Chinese planes? No, maybe it was sold in Germany. Komatsu is not one of the mud-legged soldiers of the army, and he is a cadet at the Greenwich Naval Academy in the United Kingdom, and he was secretly surprised when he saw the two planes above his head clearly, even if he didn't understand it very well, he could see that these two planes were not worse than the most advanced models in Europe in terms of appearance and speed, and they were several times better than the "wood chip" reconnaissance planes equipped with the cockpit open in the national navy, so he naturally regarded it as "aid" from Germany.

Since the two gunboats had no air defense capability, and the elevation angle of the 37 mm rapid-fire guns on the deck was not reachable, the sailors could only watch people circle around, but the scout who pioneered machine gun ground shooting in the back seat of the "Sparrow" could not bear it for a long time, and after the machine gun was ineffective last time, this time he came out and specially brought a bundle of grenades, and seeing that the gunboat was indifferent to him, he simply chose his favorite "side job" again, picked up a grenade and cracked his mouth at the pilot: "Old Ji, if I blow up and sink the gunboat, Go back and promise me your sister-in-law (). ”

"Cui braincase, you don't think about it, Lao Tzu will drop you down first." The pilot glared at the idiot and simply deflected the fuselage so that the wings were perpendicular to the ground. Fortunately, the scout had already had this kind of experience, and scolded with a smile: "For the sake of the third sister's face, my brother doesn't care." After saying that, he laughed and threw the first grenade at the gunboat Uji.

"What's that?" The sailor who had just asked stood on the deck, pointing to a black dot flying towards the Uji.

"It should be a bamboo tube for the Chinese to deliver messages."

"It's probably clutter, you see everyone else is about to fall."

"It looks like rock."

"I think it's a surrender."

Komatsu also saw the black dot, and suddenly had a strange feeling, always thinking that something would happen, so he hurriedly raised the telescope in the hope of seeing it clearly, but as soon as he raised it in front of him, a fireball suddenly exploded from above the Uji.

“***！ The army fuse is too short and flies low. ”

The grenade exploded twenty meters above the gunboat, and this level of explosion was not even a yawn, so the daring pilot hurriedly leveled the plane, circled around and lowered the altitude to sweep towards the two gunboats.

"It's a bomb! Pull the alarm and let everyone dodge the bombs! ”

Komatsu heard last year that there were cases of planes dropping bombs on the ground during the Italian-Turkish war, but I did not expect that the Chinese would actually start to use them, although this level of bombs could not hurt gunboats, but personnel were still likely to be injured if they were exposed. The sound of the siren caused chaos on the deck, and when the Japanese sailors dodged one after another, the "sparrow" had already swept overhead, and the scout threw it back while chattering: "This greeting your mother, this greeting your sister, this greeting the emperor, this old season, is there a queen mother in Japan?" ”

The "Sparrow" reconnaissance trainer imitation of Curtiss JZ-4 Jenny had good low-altitude performance, almost grazing the top of the mast and passing the two ships, and six of the dozen grenades landed on the deck and exploded, one of which really brought greetings, blowing up the two Japanese sailors huddled together into a bloody blur ().

"Hit it! Hit the mark! Haha, Lao Tzu will report when he goes back, the plane bombing the warship is effective, so that the navy will withdraw from the stage! ”

While the scouts were dancing, the sound of counterattack was also heard from the deck of the warship, and several Japanese sailors began to shoot into the air with rifles, and the chirping of bullets frightened the pilots to quickly rise to a thousand meters. Komatsu was also startled by the grenades thrown continuously, and when he saw the bloody sailors, he was also so angry that he stomped his feet, and was thinking about whether he should use naval guns to support the army, and give those squadrons some lessons and save them from provoking the navy, when a black dot quickly enlarged in his eyes, and then a column of water several meters high rose from the left side of the gunboat.

"Boom!"

The water column cleared the smoke, and the experienced Komatsu immediately understood what it was: "Damn, get ready to fight!" There is heavy artillery nearby! His judgment was not wrong, the two artillery battalions of the artillery regiment directly under the 1st Field Division west of Linjiatai had been fully deployed, and 12 German-made S.LH13 150mm howitzers and 12 German-made LE.FH09 howitzers were all aimed at the Japanese positions.

"Heavy artillery! It's heavy. Army Commander Cao reminded everyone while running, but before he could shout a word, a 105-mm shell fell beside him, and when the smoke cleared, the people around him raised their heads to find that Cao Chang, who kindly reminded everyone, couldn't even put together the corpse.

In fact, there is no need to be reminded that the whistling sound of 105 and 150 mm howitzers and 75 mm field guns are completely different things, and those Japanese veterans who experienced the Russo-Japanese War are very aware of the power of large-caliber heavy artillery, so they are all confused! Is it the Russian ** team on the other side? Or the squadron?! No, even the Russian army doesn't have so many heavy artillery! A full 24 heavy guns bombed the Yamazaki brigade stationed in Linjiatai at once, although they built fortifications along the town early, and thought that 12 75mm field guns and 2 150mm heavy guns arrived last night were enough to withstand the attack of a Chinese division, but when the shells fell, they realized how outrageous the mistake was ()!

The shells fell on the temporary fortifications that were repaired, but this bunker built with beams and stone slabs of demolished houses was not to mention the face of 150 mm grenades, even in the face of 16 kg of 105 mm grenades, it was useless, one bunker after another was completely blown up, and the machine gun fort was bombarded into the sky by an indiscriminate shelling before it could play a role, and the Japanese infantry with strong forbearance ability thought that they could avoid it by hiding in the trenches, but the "plough tractor" attack method of the 150 mm heavy artillery almost filled the entire trench, Many Japanese soldiers were buried in the dirt and unable to breathe, so they had to lean out and be shredded by the shrapnel that followed.

The worst was the Japanese artillery position, after the reconnaissance plane threw down the bamboo tube with coordinates written on it, The Meiji Type 38 75mm field guns, which had enough range but were not powerful enough, were immediately taken care of by four S.LH13 150mm howitzers and 12 German-made Le.FH09 howitzers, and the seemingly thick sandbags were useless in the face of this level of attack, and in less than ten minutes the entire artillery position was ravaged, and when the artillery regiment turned its target to the two Meiji Type 38 150mm howitzers deployed in the town, the entire field artillery position fired less than 30 shells.

"Where's our heavy artillery?"

"Fight back! Fight back now! ”

The two 150mm howitzers deployed in the town were covered with camouflage, so the reconnaissance planes did not find them at first, but when they opened fire and counterattacked, the scouts who were still holding grenades just now immediately wrote down the coordinates and loaded them into bamboo barrels, allowing the pilots to fly back and accurately drop them over the position.

"There are two 150s in the town." After the staff officer took the bamboo tube and opened it, his face froze slightly, and he handed over the reconnaissance coordinates to Cai Demao. After Jiang Tai was transferred to the mobile artillery regiment, the sharpshooter in the Hubei New Army became the commander of the artillery regiment of the first division, probably because Yang Qiu likes to use numbers to describe it, so it has also become popular in the army, for example, the 150 in the mouth of the staff officer at the moment is a 150 mm caliber heavy gun.

Unexpectedly, the Japanese army also came with heavy artillery, Cai Demao became interested and immediately ordered the 150 artillery battalion company to draw two companies to focus on dealing with these two heavy artillery that posed a great threat to the infantry (). When the two companies with a total of 8 S.LH13 150mm howitzers began to adjust the coordinates, the counterattack of the Japanese heavy artillery also arrived, but after a few rounds of fighting, Cai Demao and everyone almost all laughed, because all the shells fell two thousand meters in front of the artillery position, and there was no threat at all.

Due to the pursuit of lightweight, the Meiji Type 38 150mm howitzer with a height of more than 2 tons is only 5890 meters, while the German-made S.LH13 150mm howitzer has a range of 8675 meters when firing German-made 41-kilogram shells, and even if the standard 45-kilogram high-explosive grenade is fired after the new Wehrmacht projectile is used, the range can reach 9100 meters. The huge gap between the two caused the Japanese heavy artillery to scratch the itch at all, but a few 120-mm naval artillery shells flying on the river made the artillery regiment more vigilant.

"Forget it, use 105 against them, and let 150 give me all the strength to bomb those two gunboats!" Cai Demao thought about it or changed his strategy, and the 12 150mm howitzers quickly adjusted their muzzles, and with the help of reconnaissance planes flying around over and over again, they locked the bearing with only three salvos.

"Boom."

The thick column of water kept rising from the surface of the river, and Komatsu's face was also a little pale, he didn't expect the squadron on the opposite side to have such multiple cannons! This is not at all something that an artillery brigade and an infantry brigade can resist, and it is only a matter of time before Lin Jiatai changes hands, so he doesn't care about support and immediately orders a breakthrough, and he doesn't want to die in the "small ditch" when he dreams of crossing the sea.

But the order was still too late, with the help of reconnaissance aircraft, the speed of the artillery to lock on to targets outside the line of sight was much more convenient than before, the S.LH13 150-mm howitzer battalion with a maximum rate of fire of 5 rounds per minute threw 273 41-kilogram high-explosive grenades into the river in less than 5 minutes, and five minutes was simply not enough for two gunboats to escape from a safe distance, although it was not an armor-piercing shell for the navy, but for a gunboat with no armor protection at all, this level of firepower was also unbearable.

When a shell landed directly on the bridge, Komatsu and the officers on the bridge felt a heat in their ears and lost all consciousness.

"Knocked out! Knocked out! ”

When the two gunboats were blown up and burst into flames and began to sink into the water, the two 150 mm heavy guns that were regarded as treasures by the Japanese army were also wiped out, and the le.fh09 with a range farther than them kept throwing shells around the gun emplacement, and the Japanese artillerymen were blown up without time to react, and after learning that the gunboat and the 150 heavy guns with the greatest threat were destroyed, Cai Demao took the initiative to let the 150 artillery battalion rest temporarily, not that he didn't want to fight but this time he came out in order to speed up, the 150 mm shells were not much to carry ( )。

But the remaining 12 105mm howitzers still made the Yamazaki brigade unable to resist, and the next half hour of 1687 shells allowed the soldiers on both sides to experience what it means to rain bullets, and finally lasted until the end of the rain of bullets, but when the Japanese infantry crawled out of the bunker covered in mud, mortars and infantry artillery made them complain again.

"Artillery! And what about our artillery! Captain Yamazaki's eyes were red and he grabbed an artilleryman who had escaped, and the artilleryman had already turned pale from being frightened by the bombardment just now, and he was not woken up until he slapped him a few times, swallowed his saliva and said: "Report, the artillerymen have all broken jade!" ”

The artillery is gone?

The officers of the Yamazaki brigade did not expect that in just 45 minutes, their own artillery would be completely gone. Having experienced the Russo-Japanese War, they knew very well that artillery was the soul of the infantry! It's the guts of the infantry! Without artillery support, the combat capability of the infantry will be reduced by more than half.

"Infantry, their infantry is coming!"

In order to ensure that Lin Jiatai is taken as soon as possible and cut off the main rear road of the 38th Wing, in addition to the two regiments of the 1st Brigade, Yue Peng also decisively invested four armored vehicles, and the Japanese infantry, who had never seen armored vehicles, had not yet woken up from the heavy artillery bombardment, and encountered the baptism of 12.7 mm fangs and heavy machine guns.

Seeing that Lin Jiatai could not be saved, the Yamazaki Brigade had less than 500 soldiers left and had to retreat to Motianling to join the main force, and their departure also represented that the main force of the 38th Wing of the 16th Division of the Japanese Army was surrounded between Motianling and Linjiatai.

!#.