"Raise the crossbow, open the arrow window! Shoot!"
The divine arm crossbow held by ordinary generals can fill the arrow trough with short arrows in advance and pull up the string. As soon as the arrow window is opened, they can quickly aim at the soldiers on the enemy's wall in the distance and shoot. Afterwards, they can close the arrow window or hide in the arrow window.
While observing the reaction of the enemy soldiers in the distance, he opened the string and loaded a new crossbow arrow.
As the deputy commander of this tortoise-shell ship, Mibao stood in front of the port side observation window. Although his eyes were cold, he was staring at the enemy camp wall in the distance with blood boiling in his chest:
In the new round of shooting, dozens more surrendered Han troops were shot down - in addition to hearing the banging of the canopy armor being smashed by the enemy's crossbow arrows and scattered stone shells fired by the catapults, they heard that
The generals in the tent were unharmed.
In front of the enemy camp wall, more than 20 enemy soldiers have fallen down from the top of the wall, and they have fallen on the muddy river beach outside the wall. Some of them even did not die after falling down. At this time, they were still trying to escape from the river beach.
He struggled to climb back into the camp, and the blood from his wounds flowed all over the ground, making the muddy river beach even more mottled.
There is still a river beach about thirty steps wide between the enemy camp wall and the water surface. It is already the beginning of February in the sixth year of Shaolong. The earth has melted and the river beach has also disappeared.
become muddy.
At this time of year, there are no ready-made docks, and it is difficult for warships entering the Yuxi River to land directly on these river beaches. Therefore, the enemy camp is on the muddy river beach on the side of the river. Except for some antlers placed horizontally and vertically to prevent horses from acting as obstacles,
There is no other obstruction in the middle.
In order to facilitate the launch of heavy trebuchets, catapults and other war equipment deployed in the camp wall, the walls of the enemy camp on the side facing the water were built shorter, and the stacked walls were also extremely short.
The enemy never thought that the warships of Jingxiang would one day directly advance to close range thirty or forty steps away and engage in firefights. The kerosene cans and scattershot fired from their catapults would be difficult to cause damage to the tortoise-shell warships.
When there is an effective threat, the heavy trebuchet can only hit targets at least two to three hundred steps away. The two sides are shooting at each other with bows and crossbows at such a close range. Standing on the wall of Kaikuang Village, most of the enemy soldiers are only wearing leather armor.
, how can you not suffer a loss?
Of course, the enemy camp's weapons were not completely useless. There was a huge arrow above Mibao's head that was shot through with a crossbow. A cluster of iron arrows as big as a palm shone coldly in the darkness.
However, even if three or five giant arrows fired from a bed crossbow can penetrate the outer armor and the upper deck of the ship, what can they do?
These clusters of iron arrows were stuck after they shot through the shed panels, posing no threat to the generals in the cabin and causing little damage to the hull.
"The warships of the Imperial Navy are approaching!"
The battleship commander Feng Qi was a strong man from northern Henan. He could not stand up straight in the short cabin. He looked through the front arrow window and stared at the movement of the water on the inside of the Yuxi River. At this time, he shouted loudly, "Reminder"
Several of his generals paid attention to the new movements on the river.
Mi Bao was curious as to why a strong man like Feng Qi wanted to join the navy and become a navy general.
He moved closer to Feng Qi and looked out from the front observation window. He saw that the enemy camp at Flood Gate had lowered the iron chain ropes of the river barrier through the winches on both sides. There were more than 30 soldiers on the Yuxi River.
The midships and fighting ships swooped over like evil wolves, obviously intending to form a pincer attack with the defenders at the flood entrance camp.
"These little turtles are really ignorant! Do you think our turtle-shell ship can solve the problem on the nearside?" Another deputy commander came up from behind and couldn't help complaining, "According to me, our ship is called an iron-clad ship.
So majestic, why did you choose a ship name that sounds awkward? Turtle-shell ship, turtle-shell ship—we hide in it, don’t we all become turtle sons?”
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"Stop talking nonsense, Commander Zheng wants our ship to prepare for a surprise attack on the enemy. Let's get ready for the battle!" Feng Qi kicked his deputy Wu Tai and further confirmed with him and Mibao the tactics to be completed after the battle.
Actions and sequences.
As a military official from the remnants of the Jianye Navy, Mi Bao was incorporated into the Jingzhou Navy. Due to the urgency of the war, there was no way to conduct adequate training and practice. Therefore, he was separated from the remaining soldiers and mixed with the Jingzhou Navy to quickly
Expand the scale of Jingzhou Navy.
Otherwise, it would be impossible for Jingxiang and Xiangyang to gather more than 4,000 naval forces in Tongling and Songyang in a short period of time; after all, Jingxiang and Xinyang are also facing great challenges.
Due to the pressure of water defense, there was no way to mobilize Xu Ling's navy to the south.
Although Mibao was a battalion commander when the Ye Navy was built, he was incorporated into the Jingzhou Navy. Although his general title was still the commander, he served as Feng Qi's deputy, and together with another deputy commander, the three of them totaled
He commanded less than eighty elite navy soldiers.
Out of admiration for Marquis Jingsheng, Mibao temporarily suppressed his inner disappointment and expressed his obedience to the arrangement. However, he went to the secret water camp in the upper reaches of Tianjing Lake and saw nearly thirty iron ships hidden here for secret training.
Hull ships—Jingxiang’s internal documents refer to this type of warships as iron-shell ships. In the lower-level official documents, for the sake of confidentiality, they are called turtle ships.
Mi Bao was truly shocked when he saw with his own eyes that many large and small warships similar to midships and battleships had their sides, canopies, and front and rear decks exposed above the water covered with a layer of protective iron armor that was slightly thicker than armor.
Who would have thought before that Jingxiang Metallurgy could be so extravagant as to armor an entire warship, and even produce nearly thirty armored warships in one fell swoop?
The generals in the army preferred to call it an armored warship. Mibao also heard that the generals of Shuiying had repeatedly suggested that the company change its name to an armored warship, but the commander laughed and scolded him for being short-sighted.
Mibao couldn't understand why he was so short-sighted in changing the name of a ship, but he still held an uncontrollable excitement and threw himself into the intense and busy training, and quickly figured out the advantages and disadvantages of the tortoise-shell and iron-hulled ships.
The tortoise-shell iron-hulled ship is not without its shortcomings. In order to be more sturdy, the hull adopts a watertight compartment structure. Coupled with the armor covering, its dead weight is equivalent to that of a fully loaded warship of the same type, which is destined to be much less flexible.
At the same time, the tortoise-shell iron-hulled ship is only covered with a slightly thicker iron armor. If the hull is hit by stone bombs weighing hundreds of kilograms, it will also damage the wooden hull inside. Of course, the watertight compartment structure and the iron shell will
It can still make them take a few more hits than ordinary warships.
Another thing is that most tortoise-shell and iron-hulled ships are medium-sized warships. Faced with the same type of warships, they can rely on their own weight and solid structure, and are not afraid of ordinary boarding warfare methods, and can fearlessly run into the enemy ship array.
, but it cannot withstand the collision of large warships.
However, these shortcomings cannot cover up the extremely dazzling advantages of the tortoise-shell and iron-hulled ships.
In addition to the racket weapons equipped on large warships, apart from direct collision or squeezing, it is currently difficult to find other means to effectively suppress turtle-shell iron-hulled ships in boarding battles.
In particular, the fire oil tank tactic has been widely used in water battles on the side of the ship. What kind of nightmare will a tortoise-shell and iron-hulled ship that is not afraid of fire attacks, arrows, and shotguns bring to the enemy after it joins the side of the ship?
Just thinking about it makes me excited.
The Jingzhou navy has made many tactical arrangements in advance for the use of tortoise-shell and iron-hulled ships based on different battlefield environments. It has been conducting actual combat drills according to various tactical arrangements for the past month, and today finally has the opportunity to actually implement them.
As the waterway connecting Fengsha Lake and the Yangtze River, Yuxi River is a naturally formed cave mouth.
It was only early February at this time, and the water depth in most of the water areas of Fengsha Lake, not to mention the Yuxi River waterway, and even the inner Fengsha Lake was extremely limited.
This caused large warships to enter the Yuxi River. The bottom of the ship could easily scrape the riverbed and make it difficult to advance or retreat flexibly. Most of the river channels needed to be forcibly pulled in and out of Fengsha Lake with the help of trackers on both sides. When entering Fengsha Lake, at this time of year,
There is only a small area of water where large warships can anchor, and it is impossible to sail and row across it at will.
This battle is to use Feng Qi, Mi Bao and others to command twenty large and small tortoise-shell iron-hulled ships to form an assault ship formation. At all costs, they will clear all the obstacles and interceptions deployed by the Japanese soldiers in the Yuxi River, and lay the foundation for the subsequent
Navy warships entered Fengsha Lake to open a channel, with the goal of destroying the six large five-tooth warships that the Lubing Navy had recently stationed in Fengsha Lake.
The Five-Tooth Warship was built by the Chihu people in Laizhou to imitate the super giant ships of the previous dynasty. This kind of giant warship is sixteen feet long and nearly ten feet high. It is considered huge when placed in front of any large building ship in the world.
A huge thing.
On the deep and wide river surface, there is currently no warship in Beijing or Xiang that can compete with it. The tortoise-shell and iron-hulled ships modified from the midships are far from enough, and the ship type is simply not enough to be an enemy.
Unless a quick assault is carried out at all costs to jump ship and attack, there is no way to deal with such a giant warship using conventional tactics. However, the Beijing and Jing naval forces are at a disadvantage in terms of the size of their generals and the number of warships. This means that
If we really engage in assault and boarding operations, the casualties may be far beyond imagination.
If you want to annihilate giant ships like Lubing, the best way is to storm the station.
The five-toothed ship was fully loaded with soldiers, war equipment and necessary supplies, and its draft was eight feet deep; it was more than six feet empty.
It wanted to pass through the Yuxi River, but when the bottom of the boat was pressed against the river bed, it could only be towed by trackers. After entering Fengsha Lake, the anchorage area was only a small area of water in the southeast corner of Fengsha Lake, and it was far away from the shore.
The camp is far away - the lake is shallower near the shore.
Of course, before the core goal of today's battle, Mibao knew that they had to first defeat the enemy ships that had entered the Yuxi River from the inner Fengsha Lake and swooped in to intercept them...
