On the Yekaterinburg front, the 1st, 2nd, 8th, 9th and 10th armies of the Imperial Army surrounded the whole of Yekaterinburg. From August 13, 1854, the Reichsian Army was inoculated with four heavy artillery brigades, as well as artillery brigades of various army groups, artillery battalions of infantry brigades, a total of more than 2,000 guns, to carry out heavy artillery shelling of the Russian lines outside Yekaterinburg. Although the Russian defense line was very strong, the Imperial Army had to break through them. Even if it is a big price!

"Boom! Rumble! Rumble! "Shells after shells, whistling towards Yekaterinburg, with 155-mm shells weighing tens of kilograms, and 75-mm shells weighing only a few kilograms. The overwhelming cannonballs, like rain, enveloped the entire Yekaterinburg perimeter.

"Boom!" One shell hit a point of machine-gun fire. The machine-gun fire points of the civil structure could not withstand the attack of the shells at all, and they were torn apart at the moment.

"Boom!" A 155-mm shell hit a pillbox, a shell weighing tens of kilograms, and under the action of huge kinetic energy, the light yì broke through this pillbox, blasting the entire pillbox into the sky.

The defense line of the Russian army on the perimeter of Yekaterinburg was almost shrouded in gunsmoke. However, the heavy artillery of the Imperial Army had no problem dealing with these pillboxes and machine-gun fire points. However, it is very difficult to deal with those large fortresses. The fort was poured with reinforced concrete, and the defense was very strong, even with 155 mm heavy artillery shells. It only left a small crater in the fortress. There is simply no way to break a fortress, let alone destroy it.

"How's it going? Can you smash open the tortoise shells of those Russians? Lieutenant General Zhang Wei, commander of the 1st Army of the Imperial Army, asked.

"That's not good! Instead, some Russian machine-gun fire points and small pillboxes were destroyed. The trenches of the Russians also blew up somewhat. However, the large fortresses have remained undamaged. Don't get rid of these large fortresses. If we start attacking, I'm afraid we will be hit by their heavy fire. When the time comes, you will have to really fill it with human lives! Lieutenant General Zhao Mingfu, commander of the 2nd Army, said.

"Holy shit, if only there were naval guns. I heard that the navy had destroyed the fortress of Gibraltar, which the British had painstakingly operated for hundreds of years. If there were naval guns, there would be no problem at all in solving these fortresses! Lieutenant General Zhang Wei said with emotion.

"How can the navy's large-caliber naval guns, weighing more than a dozen tons, be used on land?" Lieutenant General Zhao Mingfu shook his head, though. He also hoped that these obstacles would be cleared as soon as possible. However, this is not realistic.

At this time, Lieutenant General Liu Wu, chief of staff of the 2nd Army, came over with a telegram.

"Two commanders, the General Staff has called back!" Lieutenant General Liu Wu said.

"Oh? Does the General Staff have a solution? Lieutenant General Zhang Wei held a glimmer of hope. If you don't want to fill it with human lives, you can only hope that the General Staff will have a solution.

"The Chief of the General Staff said that the super-heavy artillery brigade was already on its way. However, it will take at least a month or more to get from the country to the West Siberian Plain. In addition, His Majesty the Emperor has ordered the air force to come to our aid. Lieutenant General Liu Wu said.

"Air Force? What's the use of those airships? Lieutenant General Zhang Wei was dumbfounded.

"Not necessarily. Since it is an order from His Majesty the Emperor, maybe it will really be effective. Lieutenant General Zhao Mingfu, commander of the 2nd Army, said.

Lieutenant General Liu Wu also nodded. In their minds, the Emperor Long Yufei had been deified. Since Long Yufei ordered the Air Force to be sent to help in the war, there must have been his intentions. Long Yufei will never do useless work.

In Yekaterinburg, the commander of the Russian army, Field Marshal Wittgenstein, was on a high ground in the city. Observe the shelling of the Chinese * army with a telescope. A smile appeared on his face when he saw that the fortified fortresses of the Russian army were still standing in the shelling of the Chinese* army.

"Your Excellency, it seems. Heavy shelling by the Chinese, for our fortified fortresses. It's not a threat at all! If they want to conquer Yekaterinburg, they will have to pay a huge price! Admiral Alexander said. Originally. He was the commander of the Russian army in charge of the Omsk side. However, he had 350,000 men under his command, but he was defeated by the 2nd Army of the Imperial Army, and he fled back to Yekaterinburg. If it weren't for the lack of reliable generals, Field Marshal Wittgenstein would have thrown him in prison long ago.

"Haha! Those Chinese simply can't do what they can't do. I'd rather see how many shells they waste. Although the Chinese have a lot of money, it is not so easy for them to transport shells from the country to the West Siberian front. Marshal Wittgenstein said.

"Your Excellency, it seems that we have won this battle! The Chinese want to take Yekaterinburg like Chelyabinsk, that's impossible! Lieutenant General Nevelskoy also said on the side.

"Hmmm! Send a telegram to St. Petersburg, we are under fierce attack from the Chinese. However, our defense line is still impregnable, and if the Chinese want to capture Yekaterinburg, it is impossible! "Field Marshal Wittgenstein looked very confident.

On the Siberian battlefield, the Russian army has repeatedly lost, and now it has lost hundreds of thousands of troops. This is undoubtedly a great blow to the morale of the Russian army. If the Russian army can withstand the attack of the Chinese in Yekaterinburg, then they will be able to come out of the trough. This will be of great help to restore the morale of the Russian army. After surviving this winter, the Russian army may be able to launch a large-scale counterattack. At that time, the Russian army will completely change the balance of strength between the two sides, and it is not impossible to even win this war. And Marshal Wittgenstein will also become a famous Russian general on a par with Marshal Kutuzov. The difference is that Marshal Kutuzov crushed Napoleon's attack, while he crushed the attack of the Chinese Empire against Russia.

On the St. Petersburg side, Tsar Alexander II, after learning that the Chinese attack had been resisted in Yekaterinburg, could not help but put his heart back in his stomach. These days, Alexander II feared that Yekaterinburg would not be able to hold on. In this way, the Russian army will not only lose the entire Western Siberian Plain, but also the hinterland of the Eastern European Plain.

Well, now that the Chinese are fended off in Yekaterinburg, Russia has enough time to mobilize its troops while temporarily placing its main forces on the Ottoman Turkish Empire to the south. By the time the main forces of the Russian army were attracted by the Chinese Empire, a large number of Ottoman Turkish troops had already invaded Ukraine on the Black Sea coast. Ukraine has always been a grain producing area for Russia, and if Ukraine were to be captured by the Ottoman Turkish Empire, Russia would suffer heavy losses.

In the sky, white clouds drifted through the sky, leaving large shadows on the ground. However, these are not real white clouds, but airships of the Imperial Air Force. The airships of the Raise Air Force are flying in the air up to thousands of meters, and more than sixty airships, densely packed, almost fill the entire sky.

This time, Major General Song Zhiyuan, commander of the Imperial Air Force, brought out the main forces of the Air Force. There are sixty airships, in addition to 15 large airships, there are 25 medium airships, and the other twenty are small airships. On these airships, all that is stored is fuel. It took more than ten days to fly from the western regions of the empire to the West Siberian Plain, a distance of thousands of kilometers. As for the bombs needed by the Air Force, they were already transported to Central Asia by rail and then by truck to the front.

In order to ensure the consumption of weapons, ammunition, and fuel for dozens of airships, the front line specially dispatched thousands of trucks to transport them. While the airship was still on the way, the airship site thirty kilometers from Yekaterinburg had already been established. It took the Imperial Army three days to level it with an infantry brigade. On the edge of the site, there are improvised dormitories for the Air Force brothers to rest and warehouses for bombs and fuel. In order for the Air Force to arrive at the front line, it can be put into battle in time. Time is running out for the Imperial Army now, and every day is extremely precious.

On August 24, 1854, sixty airships of the Imperial Air Force, led by the commander of the Air Force, Major General Song Zhiyuan, arrived at the Yekaterinburg front. When these airships appeared on the front line overwhelmingly, those officers and soldiers who had never seen airships at all were already dumbfounded. Some superstitious people even think that it was sent by God.

Lieutenant General Zhang Wei, commander of the 1st Group Army of the Imperial Army, and Lieutenant General Zhao Mingfu, commander of the 2nd Group Army, personally greeted Major General Song Zhiyuan and his party. After all, the Air Force came this time to solve the trouble for them.

The officers and men of the Air Force, who had come from afar, rested for one night and then began to fight the next day. Early in the morning, the airships begin to inflate and carry bombs into the pods. In order to solve the Russians' fortress outside Yekaterinburg, this time the bombs used by the Air Force were all heavy bombs. Most of them were two-hundred-kilogram and five-hundred-kilogram bombs. Among them, small airships carry 200 kg of bombs, medium airships and large airships carry 500 kg of bombs.

At 9 a.m. on August 25, sixty airships of the Imperial Air Force took off and flew towards Yekaterinburg. They will start the first bombing in the history of human warfare! (To be continued......)

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