When the banging explosions continued to sound, the Ming soldiers who had just ran out of the artillery fortifications in the eastern suburbs fortress and were preparing to fight back and intercept the Chu army's infantry were suddenly killed and injured. At least hundreds of people fell this time.

During the artillery attack, the newly organized counterattack force suddenly showed signs of disintegration.

Seeing this scene, Song Zushun, who was watching the battle from behind, turned terrifyingly dark!

These damn Chu thieves were so cunning that they even killed them with a single shot!

And these damn Chu thieves are not afraid of accidentally injuring their own soldiers...

You know, when these mortar shells exploded, they were only fifty or sixty meters away from the Chu bandits' own commando soldiers.

At this distance, for a cannon with such poor accuracy as a mortar, if the gunner shakes his hand slightly when firing, the shell can land among the soldiers of the Chu Army's commando...

In Song Zushun's gloomy face, the commando team of the Chu Army's Fourth Division had already rushed to the front of the eastern suburbs fortress. They did not rush directly to fight hand-to-hand, but instead threw out black grenades one by one!
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Unfortunately... the Ming army on the opposite side also threw out a black grenade...

This scene made Luo Zhixue, who was watching the battle from behind, couldn't help but frown!

Damn, this Song Zushun learned everything...

Learn how to make your own large two-wheeled field artillery, large-caliber short-barreled matchlock guns, even hand grenades...

Why don’t you learn how to use a mortar like me...

If Song Zushun could hear Luo Zhixue's call, he would probably laugh. This grenade is very simple, just an iron shell and a match rope, and it is very useful for defensive operations.

But for mortars, I was out of my mind to make that crappy thing. With this money, I can build a few more two-and-a-half-pound and five-pound field cannons. Isn’t it delicious?

Song Zushun was engaged in defensive operations... For Song Zushun, although mortar cannons were somewhat useful in defensive operations, they were far less cost-effective than smoothbore solid artillery.

Mortars are the weapons of attackers in modern times.

However, for defensive operations, although mortars are somewhat useful, they are not too big and are very expensive.

Compared with field artillery, the price-performance ratio of mortars is actually very low. Therefore, for Song Zushun, it is far less practical to buy a few more field cannons than to buy a bunch of mortars that are extremely expensive to use.

Differences in the environment and the enemies we face will lead to completely different ideas for building an army.

The Chu army and the Ming army are almost at two extremes. The Ming army focused on various defensive operations, so they developed various anti-artillery systems, and they have not completely abandoned all types of short-barreled artillery until now.

Well, in defensive operations, these short-barreled shotguns are actually of some use. They can hit a distance of two to three hundred meters. If they can accurately hit the attacker's dense formation of infantry, they will immediately hit the enemy's infantry formation.

It can knock down a large area.

In addition, these short-barreled shotguns are also relatively light and low-cost. You can even buy one for dozens of taels of silver. And the most important thing is that this thing is an area-killing weapon, so there is no need to consider the issue of shooting accuracy, so for

The requirements for a gunner are also very low. As long as you know how to load and aim, you can pull it out and use it as a gunner.

Unlike those new field artillery, because the solid shells are point-killing and the range is only a few hundred meters, the requirements for shooting accuracy are relatively high, so the requirements for the gunner are naturally very high.

Therefore, for the Ming army in the contemporary era, there is actually no big problem in building these field guns. They can even cast large-caliber Hongyi artillery with longer barrels. It is natural to build field guns with smaller calibers and smaller magnifications.

There is no problem anymore.

At most, the quality of the artillery produced is slightly poor, and it is easy to explode...

However, they can really produce these field artillery.

However, they have no good solution for gunners and even higher-level artillery commanders.

Contemporary gunner training is actually very troublesome. Even the Chu army's artillery has a fire table when it leaves the factory. The gunners can shoot according to the fire table, and at the same time, various distance measurements and calculations and adjustments of the shooting elements.

, there will also be artillery officers from above taking charge.

However, the ordinary gunner responsible for loading can perform the operation step by step, but the gunner must know some basic geometric knowledge and calculation ability.

Otherwise, when your immediate superior, the artillery officer, is injured and unable to provide various distance measurements and calculations of design elements, you will probably be blind.

Finally, gunners, especially gunners, inevitably need to conduct a lot of live-fire training so that they can master accurate gunnery skills.

In order for artillery these days to fire accurately, in addition to certain calculations, there is also a very important point, and even more important point is the experience of the gunner...

The gunner who has fired many live ammunition and has rich experience does not need to make all kinds of troublesome calculations. He can visually see the impact point of the bullet and then make slight adjustments to accurately hit the target.

If it is an inexperienced gunner, even if he adjusts repeatedly, he will not be able to hit the target for a long time.

Live ammunition training requires the consumption of the barrel life of the artillery, and more importantly, the consumption of propellant.

An iron-cast artillery has a barrel life of only three to four hundred rounds, and some of poorer quality may have even less. If you fire dozens or hundreds of rounds during training, then the barrel life of this artillery will be only three to four hundred rounds.

It’s a lot less.

Not to mention propellants, just one word: expensive!

Because of the high cost of gunpowder, not to mention the live-fire training of artillery, even the live-fire training of infantry has to be done as much as possible.

For local tyrants such as the Chu Army, the soldiers only received fifty rounds of live-fire training during the recruit training camp... Occasionally, for the live-fire training of the troops during non-combat periods, it would be good to have ten rounds a month.

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As for artillery... every live-fire training is carefully planned and conducted in units of single digits.

This is the case with the Chu army, not to mention the Ming army. After increasing the scale of guns and equipment, they even have very limited ammunition for combat, which is difficult to guarantee, let alone use it for large-scale live ammunition training.

of.

At most, it’s just a symbolic firing of a few shells to hear the sound, but anything more is impossible.

The quality of gunners trained in this way is naturally worrying.

If the gunners can barely make do with it, the artillery officers are even more troublesome.

Even though they are just playing with smoothbore muzzle-loading guns these days, the requirements for artillery officers are not low at all.

When the Chu Army's Army Officer Academy recruits students, the requirements for artillery trainees are the highest, because artillery officers need to learn a lot of mathematics, geometry and other knowledge.

Even so, most of the artillery officers trained by the Chu army were only half-qualified. Many of them had to continue to learn various mathematical knowledge by themselves even after they graduated and served.

What the Chu army produced was a bunch of half-hearted people, and the level of the artillery officers on the Ming army's side was needless to say...

They do not have a special officer academy to train artillery officers. Their artillery officers are either ordinary artillerymen or transferred from other generals. Very few of them know how to calculate shooting elements.

During the battle, if you ask them to temporarily measure the distance and adjust the shooting points, most of them will be blinded!

Under such circumstances, the hit rate of the artillery shells fired by the Ming Army's artillery unit can be imagined.

During the offensive and defensive battle at the Eastern Suburb Fortress outside Yangzhou City, the Ming Army's artillery units actually fired back very fiercely, especially the six two-and-a-half-pound field cannon and the two five-pound field cannon on the Eastern Suburban Fortress.

I started shooting during the battle and never stopped.

But their results were very limited.

Of course, there are Chu army's mortar units and infantry units among them. They all maneuver through the traffic trenches as cover, and have very little time to show their faces.

But it was also because the Ming army's artillery was too poor to hit.

After the Chu army's commando launched the charge, their artillery units achieved certain results because of the close distance and the obvious target of the Chu army's soldiers.

However, this result is nothing compared to the entire battle.

When the soldiers of the Fourth Division's commando team rushed to the eastern suburbs fortress, they threw grenades one after another. Although our own side inevitably suffered casualties caused by the enemy's grenade throwing.

However, at this time, the distance between the two sides was only about ten or twenty meters, and the Ming army was actually unable to stop the charge of the commandos.

At this time, some Ming army soldiers in the eastern suburbs fortress also launched a counterattack at the urging of Ming army officers.

For a time, hundreds of soldiers from both sides were fighting with each other in a corner of the front line. They were fighting with bayonets, muskets, spears, knives and shields.

But not all Ming soldiers in every defensive position had the courage to fight back.

More Ming troops still huddled in the trenches and tried to resist behind the parapets.

And this kind of stubborn resistance, in the face of the Chu army's commandos rushing towards them in groups, even though it will cause certain casualties to one's own side, it can give the Chu army's commandos room to break through.

Soon, a group of soldiers from the Chu Army's commando team rushed to a Ming Army's trench position and then rushed in.

Screams continued on all fronts, and soldiers from both sides engaged in a close-range melee, kicking off the most brutal Battle of the Eastern Suburb Fortress in the Yangzhou Campaign.

About a quarter of an hour later, Army Major General Bao Yangyun, the commander of the Fourth Division, saw that a certain breakthrough had been made on the front line, and at the same time found that the enemy troops were continuing to reinforce through the trenches, so he decisively ordered his 15th Infantry Regiment to go up with reinforcements.<

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As a result, both sides invested a total of at least 3,000 troops in a small battlefield like the Eastern Suburb Fortress, engaging in primitive and brutal fighting!
Chapter completed!