10 kilometers away, Tao Mingzhang called through the radio, the camouflage of the troops had been completed, and he was sure that he would not be spotted by the air if he stopped on the side of the road.

Tao Mingzhang is more cautious and dull than Zhou Youfu, his call synchronization was intercepted by 419, Lin Xiuxuan used a drone to conduct a rigorous inspection, sure enough, at high resolution, it is difficult to find only by optical reconnaissance, of course, thanks to the short barrel of this self-propelled gun. If it is difficult to see the flaws in such a stable picture of the drone, then the enemy reconnaissance plane that is bumping in the air flow should not see anything if it only looks down in a glimpse. But the risk is still there, and the convoy is still easy to spot when it moves, and the solution is of course to move forward at night, but the fighter plane is fleeting and may not match your time. Now the number of enemy planes is very large, and the grid is divided into shards for reconnaissance, and the formation is more than Songhu. It's not easy to maneuver right under their noses, open fire, and exit.

Chu Tingchang still did not make up his mind to let the artillery get close to the range of the enemy's artillery, and he also noticed the enemy planes that appeared from time to time overhead, even a cavalry detachment like him had to hide, let alone the chariots? But the enemy came up quickly, and without giving a little color, he came all the way. At that time, it is difficult to say that the British will not be determined to collapse and abandon the East Indies and flee.

He felt a little lonely at this moment. The Americans sent a lot of weapons overseas, on the one hand, they went to the Soviet Union through the Suez Canal, and on the other hand, they went ashore in Mumbai, but because of India's narrow-gauge railway, the M7 self-propelled gun is already the heaviest weapon in India, and to put it bluntly, it is unrealistic to challenge a warship of several thousand tons with armored vehicles of more than 20 tons. He changed his mind, the British, there won't be some heavy firepower hidden there, right?

He remembered that when he was rushing to transport weapons in the port, the British also took the cannons from the fortress, and blew them up on the spot if they couldn't move them, although they didn't see the guns larger than 5.5 inches being transported, but maybe there was something he didn't observe. He has learned that the British are best at hiding things under the noses of their allies, and perhaps it is time for 419 to play a role.

The drone launched a large-scale search from an altitude of 8,000 meters. Two hours later, a slow-moving train was spotted at the mouth of a tunnel hidden in the mountains near Ranchi. Judging by its appearance, it is a train gun loaded with heavy artillery. Judging by the proportions, there may be a cannon on board that is more than 35 times the diameter, and the caliber may be 305 mm. Judging from the cranes, sappers and dismantled gun mounts of the British army near the railway station in front, it seems that the artillery was reassembled and dismantled and deployed to a commanding height near Ranchi. 4

Qin Xiaosu immediately searched for matching content in all the messages intercepted a while ago, and sure enough, he found a single word about these artillery. One of the telegrams mentioned that the British army at the front had proposed to Vivier headquarters to use the BL92MK2 9.2-inch train gun (47 times 234 mm) against the Japanese fleet, and Vivier seemed to have studied this proposal carefully, but the plan was later cancelled. The reason for the cancellation is unknown, but judging from the time, it was after Chu Tingchang put forward the proposal to abandon the beachhead and use mobile combat to annihilate the enemy.

Another telegram indicates that the cannons, of various calibers, were shipped from British fortifications in Bermuda, South Africa, and Sierra Leone 10 months ago, as well as several 305-millimeter cannons and 183-millimeter naval guns, and it appears that the British Empire still has a lot of historical stock, although they are old goods from the First World War or even earlier.

The British army's earliest plan was to use a general drawing to install gun mounts on the train site to secure these large and small guns to make them train guns for coastal mobile defense, but after a few test shots, it was found that there were potential problems, and it was obvious that these guns were not suitable for narrow track trains as chassis. The report indicates that any directional firing beyond plus or minus 10 degrees could cause the train cannon to overturn. Too many shots can also cause the foundations to sink and the rails to be damaged, making it impossible for the train to continue moving, and the train guns require too many troops to be attached to them, which is not cost-effective. In the end, that is, the day before yesterday, the Vivier headquarters decided to abandon this plan, dismantle these guns, and pull down the hill to defend the headquarters of the 14th Army.

When Chu Tingchang got the above news, he felt that he could take advantage of it, he knew too well the virtues of the British, and he would rather spoil it than be willing to cheap outsiders. Of course, the technical difficulty is that the directional firing range is too small, and the actual combat effect is limited, if there is time, of course, a circular railway can be specially built to implement the full firing range, but there is no time now.

In essence, the bulky naval gun is difficult to maneuver on land, the use of which is very restrictive, and it should indeed be eliminated, but it has an information advantage, and the situation is different.

He immediately sent a computer to Stilwell's ministry stating that one of his convoys of oil had seen the British railroad near Ranchi transporting huge cannons and might need to be called in to resist the enemy fleet heading north along the Ganges. Stilwell replied that he did not know about the existence of these weapons, but would ask immediately, but he did not think that such World War I weapons could have any effect, and if these guns fired, they would soon be destroyed by Japanese aircraft.

Chief Chu called back that now that the war is urgent, he should use any weapon at hand, and as for problems such as the narrow shooting range, he can solve it.

After a while, the old man replied to the telegram, and after coordination, the British army was willing to cooperate, and then he asked Pavilion Chief Chu how he knew that there was a problem with the shooting boundary.

Chu Tingchang didn't have time to explain to the old man what he had said and continued to track the Japanese fleet on the river. After a while, the British army contacted him directly, saying that two guns could be mobilized at any time, and the liaison officer was already on the way, and soon returned to the Chuting Chang camp to discuss the use of them, but the artillery should be 24 hours before it arrived at any designated position in West Bengal.

It seems that the British may not have concealed it out of malice, and may not really think it will be of any use. Now that the Allies want to use it, it's refreshing.

Chu Tingchang studied the nearby railroad and found a section of the railway from Danbad to West Bengal, one of which is surrounded by mountains, if you choose a section from west to east, the firing boundary can be solved, and the concealment is not bad, but the enemy fleet is moving too fast, if it is not intercepted, it will go all the way out of the firing boundary.

He counted the time, and they had to be stopped tonight. Of course, shooting at night is too accurate, and there is bound to be a little bit of horse's feet to be exposed, but the top priority is to block the enemy, and there is no time to think about it so much.

He immediately ordered Tao Mingzhang to take the artillery battalion out and set up a position at the mountainous location he designated. At the same time, have the battalion infantry on guard in a radius of ten miles around and shoot at any natives who come close.

At the same time, intensive technical support work began on 419, and today it will be an unprecedented challenge, using modern drones to guide the artillery of the old era, hitting a very fast and small target, it is not so easy. In the past, similar shots were used to cover a large area of infantry groups, which was much less difficult.

Shu Ping began to design a new command method. In principle, UAVs provide shooting elements, and it is not realistic to shoot at moving point targets through voice communication. According to the feedback of target movement information, the modern shooting commander provides the elements for real-time ballistic calculation; But the M7 battalion, which manually adjusted the guns and gave the firing command with the password, could not do it.

Then Shu Ping can only match the time with the enemy's movement, to put it simply, first calculate the path of the enemy ship, let the artillery group aim at the point that the enemy must pass, and then calculate the enemy's passing time, calculate the timing of his own artillery fire, and give the commander a advance time before the enemy reaches the firing area, and he will order to fire according to the time. In addition to the need to calculate the temperature, muzzle velocity, and wind speed, the estimation of the speed of the enemy's travel route makes it an order of magnitude more difficult to calculate the azimuth advance. In particular, the enemy seems to be constantly changing course to evade*.

Of course, Shu Ping quickly observed the trajectory pattern of the flagship Beishang, and it seemed that the commander was a little lazy, probably paralyzed by hitting the wood twice*. He wrote a set of workable calculations and fed them into the computer to make a match, and after testing, he was able to get a shot window each time, with a lead time of about 70 seconds. That is to say, he can predict the position of the enemy ship in one minute, and the accuracy can be controlled at about 5 to 10 meters.

After nightfall, 12 M7 self-propelled guns, which were excellently concealed, entered the designated positions. It was a forest covered by towering ancient trees, and it was indeed the best location, but Tao Mingzhang found that the position was separated from the river by a mountain, which greatly surprised him.

He had thought it would be a mountain pass on the shore so that he could see the target and shoot straight at it, but he also knew that if he fired it, he would be seen by the other side.

Here a battalion of 12 105 guns, less than 300 tons of steel, to ram a cruiser with 7 140 guns, 5000 tons of steel, no matter how you look at it, it is looking for death, but that is also the only way, he was originally going to let go, but he didn't expect Chu Tingchang to give him a position 3 kilometers away from the river, it seems that he wants to shoot across the mountain.

Chief Chu Ting, who rushed to meet him, immediately ordered him to take communication equipment and a pair of cavalry to wait for the enemy ships on the hill by the river, constantly report changes in position, and calculate the shooting yuan, and he commanded the artillery bombardment. After all, Tao Mingzhang learned a lot from Brooke, and knew that it would never work to fight like that, and only by going to the shore to shoot directly and projecting could he have a little chance, otherwise a battalion would lose a base number, and he might not be able to touch the enemy's hair. This is also the reason why naval battles usually take half a day, and his rangefinder is only one meter long, which is not a point or two worse than that used by the navy.

According to Tao Mingzhang's knowledge, even behind such a low hit rate in naval battles, there are at least 20 people in the gunpowder command post on the warship to operate the fire control synchronously, and these people have to constantly follow up all kinds of information to guide the integration computer to get the closest distance change rate. After the firing was unfolded, it was indispensable to measure the range of each shell to stir up a column of water and correct the error, but he could not live with these. 12 guns fired indiscriminately, even in the daytime, it is impossible for him to know which column of water was provoked by that shell, let alone at night, during which the accumulation of various errors can allow the shells to enter the enemy's perimeter 200 meters. To hit a shot, I don't know how many shells will have to be consumed, and his artillery battalion does not have a large number of ammunition trucks with it at all, only a base ammunition.

He felt that Chu Tingchang was a little childish and wanted to put forward his own opinions, but he couldn't find the opportunity. The division was leading the artillerymen to burn incense and pray there, and then divined a good hexagram from the shock of Xunshang, as far as the hexagram is concerned, it is an invincible upper hexagram with wind and thunder. So all the troops cheered up and shouted together, as if the Japanese warships had been sent to the bottom of the river, and the Japanese had also fed Wang Ba.

Tao Mingzhang recalled that in the past, Shizuo's actions looked very strange, but the final result was always reliable. Maybe this time he will be able to manifest again? In the end, I made up my mind not to mention it. It's a big deal that you can't fight, but the enemy can't see it across the mountain, and then take advantage of the night to withdraw, so that there will be no losses.