Since the advent of railways, the most powerful mode of transportation on land in the world is railways and trains running on them. People often compare railway lines to the economic lifeline of a country, but they don't know that this transportation lifeline used to communicate with each other can turn into a country's sword when necessary, and give the opponent a heavy blow!

In the era when there was no air force, the firepower of the two sides was the heavy artillery unit, and the larger caliber and longer range were the goals that the armies of various countries were constantly pursuing, but with the continuous improvement of artillery performance, the armies of various countries found it more and more difficult to transport these powerful behemoths. So much so that even the German Army's corps-level units could only be equipped with 8-inch guns at most, and they were short 8-inch guns. In the process of transportation, there is also disassembly, transportation and assembly after arriving at the position.

Faced with increasingly heavy artillery and rough roads in a field environment, the Russian Army gradually adopted light artillery that could be quickly mobile as the main support fire. In terms of Russian tactical thinking, if the heavy artillery cannot keep up with the speed of the troops, it will not be able to play a role, in which case it is better to move quickly with all light artillery.

The idea is good, but the reality is cruel. When the reorganized army of the Russians was put into the battlefield of World War 1, when the Germans ignored the Russian army at the beginning, the offensive of the Russian army was smooth, but when the German army with a large number of heavy artillery came over, the loss of the Russian army into the formation, and a large number of light artillery in the face of the German heavy artillery with overwhelming superiority in range and power can be said to be no different from burning sticks. Although these heavy artillery pieces move slowly and consume enormously. But as soon as you enter the launch position, then the blow to the opponent will be fatal!

In the future Sino-Russian Second War, the Chinese War Department agreed that the two sides would launch a positional offensive and defensive battle near Nebuchu. Large-scale corps maneuvers are actually very difficult to implement. The reason is simple. Neither side was able to form a large army formation without the support of the main railway line, and launched a great depth and detour in a vast area. On the one hand, there are not enough horses and vehicles. What's more important is that there is not enough logistical supplies, maybe with the strength of the Russians, it is not a problem to get tens of thousands or even more than 100,000 horses, but what about horses, fodder and supplies? The supply of one war horse can feed ten soldiers. Such a huge attrition made it impossible for the Russians, who were far away from Eastern Europe, to support it, and at this stage, the Trans-Siberian Railway was barely able to support the operations of the Great Army. Not to mention supporting a large number of mobile corps operations. So, there is no way, the Russians can only honestly spread out near Nebuchu.

As for the Chinese Army. Although the battlefield is very close to the largest industrial base in China, China itself lacks large-scale horses, and because of the overpopulation, the food itself is not rich, and the size of the horse herd cannot be compared with that of Russia. As for getting a car? Before the 1 World War, large trucks were a luxury. It is obviously not possible to pin the supply of the army on these expensive and not very mature things.

So the way the two sides fight is very simple. It is to carry out offensive and defensive battles around the city of Nebuchu. The most indispensable thing in positional offensive and defensive warfare is heavy artillery. With no certainty that the number of horses and cars would be sufficient, the only thing the Chinese Army could rely on if it wanted to transport those deadly heavy artillery pieces over was railway transportation.

According to the experience of previous wars, the maximum power of artillery that can be carried by the corps class is not more than an 8-inch short howitzer, or a 6-inch long-barreled gun. THE ARTILLERY CARRIED BY THE DIVISION LEVEL IS GENERALLY A 6-INCH SHORT-BARRELED GUN OR A 120MM LONG-BARRELED GUN. But these artillery pieces were definitely not enough to cope with the battle of the army group level. In the face of the Russian fortifications, Huaxia needed 10-inch to 12-inch short-barreled howitzers to deal with the opponent's heavy fortresses, and also needed 8-inch long-barreled artillery to suppress the opponent's artillery.

If you want to get these heavy things to the battlefield, you have to use trains. In that case, it would be better to set up a railway artillery unit to be responsible for controlling these powerful killing weapons. At Xu Jie's suggestion. The railway artillery was subordinate to the direct command of the War Department. It has two divisions, one of which is the railway engineer unit. The other is the railway artillery team.

The task of the former is to be responsible for transporting these precious railways to the designated launch position, and at the same time completing the laying of temporary railways and the construction of launch positions. For example, a wooden ring-firing gun position or a railway ring-firing position. And was responsible for the supply and maintenance of artillery.

And the railway artillery is no different from ordinary artillery. To put it bluntly, it is a heavy artillery unit that has been relying on railways for maneuvering, and the source of artillery for this heavy artillery unit is selected from the naval guns that were originally retired from the navy. These long-used naval guns can be re-equipped as long as the inner barrel is replaced.

The 12-inch 40L naval gun does not have a particularly long barrel at all. When attacking bunkers after changing to land artillery, they mainly rely on heavy bullets to penetrate the opponent's protection from the horizontal direction. Instead of relying on the high muzzle velocity of the shell to penetrate vertically, the first thing the Army Ordnance Department did after receiving this batch of munitions was to cut the barrel short. Then a reduction charge was used, and a heavier concrete armor-piercing projectile was replaced. Thicker quilt caps and more curved ballistics make these heavy guns complete bunker killers.

If the most powerful gun is the 12-inch 40L short gun. Then the most popular among the commanders of various armies is probably the 8-inch 40L railway gun. These guns are moderately weight, and the biggest advantage is that they have a long enough range and are powerful enough to deal with the vast majority of targets. Especially when equipped with a new type of grenade projectile, a 100KG shell can spread the rain of death over an area the size of half a football field. (Of course, this is ideal, but in fact this range is greatly reduced due to various problems.) But it's still quite terrifying for the vitality of the force. ）

And what puzzles the army the most is, what to do with those 10-inch 40L guns? When it comes to range, the 10-inch 40L is undoubtedly farther than the 8-inch. There is even an excess of range. As for the power, the damage to the bunker is definitely not as good as the 12-inch short gun. And in the face of cluster targets, because the shells are too heavy, the projection per unit time of these guns is not as good as that of 8-inch guns. After all, the land artillery is not as complete as the servo equipment of the naval artillery. SHELLS WEIGHING 227KG ARE NOT EASY TO RELOAD EVEN WITH SIMPLE MACHINERY. In short, the positioning of the 10-inch gun is very weak.

When Xu Jie learned about the situation, in line with the principle of waste utilization, he still suggested that the railway artillery should be equipped with these 10-inch long-range guns when the relevant vehicles were sufficient, the reason was very simple, in Xu Jie's view, the land artillery did not have an excessive range. TO KNOW THE 240MM ULTRA-LONG-RANGE ARTILLERY OF THE FRENCH WAR 1 THAT YEAR, THE 240MM ULTRA-LONG-RANGE GUN HAD A RANGE OF MORE THAN 40KM. And with the correction of balloons or airships, it is still possible to attack surface targets of about 20KM. Xu Jie doesn't really want to hit how many things, how much can cause some trouble. In this way, the systematic army railway artillery was officially established. And this heavy artillery unit, which relied on railways for maneuvering, also played a huge role in future battles!

Thanks to the book friend Kongchen for the reward, as well as the book friend tianlang588 and Qiang Lin's monthly pass support ~~~. (To be continued.) )