Chapter 1436 Who is more stingy between the army and the navy?
Before the Tang Army deployed a large number of nine-pound and five-pound field artillery, they had to deploy a large number of heavy artillery and bombard Malacca City to cover the closer deployment of a larger number of small and medium-caliber artillery.
As for when the infantry will charge, that is a matter for the future. Anyway, until the artillery completely destroys the city of Malacca and obtains an overwhelming firepower advantage, the infantry will not rush to attack the city rashly, because that is not siege, but death.
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The Portuguese also have muskets and a lot of artillery, right? For example, those Franco machine cannons, like the one-pound, two-pound, three-pound and other shotguns distributed in large quantities by the Tang Dynasty military, can shoot a large number of
A weapon that kills people, no matter how thick the plate armor is, it can't stop it!
Ever since Datang's artillery troops built a heavy artillery position on a hill about 500 meters away, the artillery battle between the two sides officially broke out!
Dozens of large-caliber artillery pieces from both sides launched a fierce bombardment from a distance of 500 meters!
In the Tang Dynasty, the first to fire were the 24-pound and 18-pound heavy cannons, with a total number of more than 20. These heavy cannons had a long range and were powerful. Even at a distance of more than 500 meters, they could hit
The rate is not very good, but it can be made up for by the huge power of the shells.
The only target of these heavy artillery bombardments was the Portuguese artillery on top of the city of Malacca, or to be more precise, their artillery.
During the siege, dense artillery was used to engage in artillery battles with the enemy, and then the enemy's artillery units were destroyed, turning the enemy's artillery into scrap metal. Finally, the artillery was used to cover the infantry to launch a charge. This has always been the way for the Tang Army to attack.
The city’s routine.
This was how they played during the Unification War, and they still play like this now!
The reason why it has always done this is actually very simple, that is, the Tang Army has almost absolute artillery superiority.
When fighting the Ming Army, the Tang Army had an artillery advantage. Now it also has an artillery advantage when fighting the Portuguese. Now, more than a hundred artillery pieces have arrived at the front line, and there are still a lot of them in the joint landing fleet.
Armed merchant ships and even navy warships are still continuing to dismantle their artillery pieces and put them on the case, and continue to provide reinforcements.
The Army of the Tang Dynasty, which had the advantage of artillery, always liked to use artillery to suppress people, instead of using artillery and foolishly engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy.
And obviously, the Portuguese have never seen such a violent bombardment!
It's not a matter of the number of artillery. When it comes to the number of artillery, there are many of them. When they occasionally pretend to be pirates and attack other people's ports, they have also done things like bombarding enemy ports with hundreds or even hundreds of artillery.
What really frightened the Portuguese was the artillery shells used by the Tang Dynasty military!
It is also a front-loaded smoothbore cannon. Most of the Portuguese still use solid bullets. At most, they occasionally risk using grenades with external matchlock fuses. However, the Tang military has fully popularized the use of grenades with built-in fuses.
Therefore, in terms of artillery shells, the Portuguese are at an absolute disadvantage!
Whenever an artillery shell from the Tang Dynasty military landed on the Portuguese artillery position, it would cause a bloody storm!
Especially the bombardment of the six 48-pound short-barreled howitzers, its power is even more earth-shattering!
The size of the 48-pound artillery used by the army and navy of the Tang Dynasty is equivalent to the Western 64-pound artillery. Needless to say, the power of artillery of this size is great. Every 48-pound grenade landed in Malacca City and exploded.
, the scene was earth-shattering, even if it missed the target and landed in no man's land, it would bring great psychological deterrence to the Portuguese.
If such a large artillery shell happened to land on the Portuguese city, its explosive power would be enough to sweep across the nearby city wall within tens of meters. Even if it flew over the city and fell into the buildings outside the city, its huge
The power of the explosion can also directly blow down all kinds of buildings.
It is true that this 48-pound short-barreled howitzer is difficult to load, and it takes several minutes to fire one round. Moreover, the accuracy of this short-barreled howitzer is even worse. In fact, few shells can accurately hit the enemy's artillery position.
But its huge power makes up for all shortcomings!
This kind of artillery can scare the enemy to death even if it cannot blow them up.
In addition, six 24-pound cannons with large calibers, although powerful, are relatively small in number, so the overall killing effect is not too great.
What can really bring significant damage to the Portuguese city artillery troops are the large number of 18-pound and 14-pound artillery pieces.
Its eighteen-pound cannon was a relatively typical semi-cannon, and it was also the main naval gun of the Tang Navy. Its tactical importance even exceeded that of the twenty-four-pound naval gun.
In fact, this kind of artillery was developed and equipped as a supplement to the 24-pound cannon in the early years. It was only used as a transitional one at the beginning. The 24-pound cannon was the navy's pursuit goal.
But later the navy discovered that the twenty-four-pound artillery was good, with range and power, but it was too heavy! It could only be equipped in large quantities on warships above the 800-ton level. If warships with smaller tonnage were reluctantly equipped, the number would not be enough.
go.
This also means that the large number of frigates and various auxiliary ships in the Tang Navy cannot be equipped with such real main heavy artillery.
Under this circumstance, the Navy still thought of the eighteen-pound naval gun again, and subsequently equipped it extensively with the Navy's various warships of more than 400 to 500 tons, whether it is a battleship, a cruiser, a frigate, or even an armed transport ship.
These types of artillery are widely equipped. This kind of artillery is currently the real main naval gun in the navy, and its strategic position even exceeds that of the 24-pound naval gun.
But if you want to talk about range and accuracy, in fact, this 14-year-old 18-pound naval gun is not as good as the 16-year-old 14-pound new naval gun, because this 16-year-old 14-pound naval gun
, is currently the artillery with the highest caliber in the Tang Dynasty military, with a caliber reaching an astonishing twenty-eight times.
Its caliber is 150 mm, and its barrel length is 4,200 mm. The grenade it launches, because the new grenade uses a wooden base, and in order to increase the charge, the current grenade is actually not
The prototype is pointed and cylindrical, and its ammunition types exceed the traditional concept of fourteen pounds.
Due to the gradual development of artillery, especially the weight of artillery shells, it has become increasingly difficult to completely classify the types and power of artillery. Because of the same nine-pound cannon, the Tang military actually has several types, such as the navy's nine-pound naval gun and the army's nine-pound cannon.
The 14-pound field artillery is two completely different types of artillery. As for the 14-pound artillery, the army and navy are equipped with as many as five types at the same time, ranging from twenty times to twenty-eight times the length.
Li Xuan is also promoting a new classification of artillery types and preparations. He plans to classify the cost of artillery based on caliber and barrel length, instead of simply using traditional bullet weight.
However, this is all a follow-up matter. At present, the Tang Dynasty military still refers to various types of artillery by the weight of the bullet. In order to distinguish them, they will add terms such as howitzer, short-barreled howitzer, cannon, semi-cannon, and long cannon.
If further subdivided, the year will be added.
Among them, the Navy's twenty-four-pound naval gun is a cannon. In terms of model, it belongs to the 12-year-old model. Although there were improvements later, the improvement was not significant.
The 18-pound naval gun is a semi-cannon and belongs to the 15-year-old type.
The sixteen-year-old fourteen-pound naval gun is a long gun. In addition, the navy also has a short fourteen-pound naval gun, which is the nine-year-old type and has a barrel diameter of only twenty-three times.
Among them, the 16-year-old fourteen-pound long gun has an astonishing range and a very good accuracy. In theory, even if it is bombarded at a distance of about 800 meters, it has a certain hit accuracy. Nowadays,
When bombarded at a distance of more than 500 meters, the hit rate is quite impressive.
As for accuracy, the maximum range of this artillery can reach 6,300 meters!
At the same time, the shells of this artillery are lighter and easier to move manually. However, the shells of artillery exceeding this caliber are too heavy, making loading very troublesome.
The shells are lighter and easier to load, so the rate of fire will naturally increase. Therefore, to a certain extent, the rate of fire of this 14-pound artillery can be comparable to that of a nine-pound artillery.
It has a long range, high accuracy, easy loading, and moderate power. Therefore, this 14-pound, 27-fold cannon has always been popular among the Tang Army, Navy, Guards, and company fleets.
Favor of the official armed forces of the Empire.
Twenty-eight times the weight of the 14-pound artillery, it has always been loved by various armed forces of the Tang Empire such as the Army, Navy, Guards, and Company fleets. However, love does not mean a large amount of equipment!
Why? This gun is expensive!
Because the barrel is too long, it means casting is difficult, and the yield rate of the gun barrel is relatively low, which relatively increases the manufacturing cost!
And for the navy, the shells fired with a caliber of 150 mm are still not as powerful as the 18-pound or 24-pound shells, and the ability to attack ships is a bit worse. If you don't pursue power, you only pursue quantity.
If so, the Navy would rather choose a lighter gun that can deploy more nine-pound artillery!
So it is very helpless. This kind of 14-pound naval gun, which is 28 times more powerful, is an auxiliary artillery in the navy. Its tactical status is far inferior to that of the 18-pound cannon. It is not even as good as the nine-pound cannon. It is basically the same as the 20-pound cannon.
A four kilogram naval gun is equivalent.
As for the Army, they also like this 14-pound cannon that weighs 28 times more. Unfortunately, this cannon is not only more expensive, but also heavier.
The army's artillery needs to strictly control the weight of the artillery, because weight represents mobility. If you make an extremely heavy artillery, it will not be transported to the front line and it will be useless.
Then, the Army is even more stingy than the Navy when it comes to purchasing equipment!