Three hundred and fiftieth chapters bombarded the city collapsed
Although the city wall of Liping Prefecture is thicker than that of Xingquan Prefecture, strictly speaking, it is still just a small city in a remote place. Its urban area is not much larger than a county in the prosperous land of Jiangnan, and its city walls are not large.
It is as thick and tall as the walls of the northern border city.
The walls of such a small-scale city are actually unable to cope with siege weapons such as artillery.
Solid bullets hit the city wall one after another. Although there will be no problems with the city wall in a short period of time, there are more and more cracks on the city wall. No one knows if the city wall will continue to be bombarded.
Completely collapsed.
Once the city wall collapses, it will be difficult to stop the puppet Tang rebels.
The Ming army defenders at the top of Liping Mansion were on tenterhooks, while the new Tang troops outside the city were observing the bombardment with great interest, and the mid-level and senior officers were discussing with each other from time to time.
Obviously, they were also curious about the effect of this bombardment.
Because this attack on Liping Mansion was the first formal siege operation since the founding of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty, and it was also the first time artillery was used in siege operations.
In the past battles between the New Army of the Tang Dynasty and the Ming Army, they successively captured Zhengtai County, Lianhe County, and Xingquan Prefecture. As for Bailin County, it was Fuguo County, and the county government was located in Xingquan Prefecture.
However, in these three conquered places, no large-scale formal siege actually broke out. Zhengtai County was attacked twice. The first time was when Su Jiakang used Zhengtai County as a temptation. Therefore, there were no large-scale siege operations in Zhengtai County at that time.
There were not many Ming troops, and for the second time, Zhengtai County had been surrounded by the new army of the Tang Dynasty for several months, and most of the troops Su Jiakang had assembled before had been annihilated.
Therefore, the two attacks on Zhengtai County actually encountered little resistance.
The same was true for the attack on Xingquan Prefecture. Song Zhiwen brought out all the troops in the city of Xingquan Prefecture, and they were all destroyed in the two battles of Lanjiang. Later, some people in the city voluntarily surrendered and opened the city gates to welcome the new army of the Tang Dynasty.
Therefore, in the attack on Xingquan Mansion, there was actually no large-scale offensive and defensive operations. The only battles were in the direction of the city gate and the clearing operations after the new Tang Dynasty troops entered the city.
On the other hand, the capture of Lianhe County was a bit more formal, but at that time Lianhe County was isolated and helpless, and at the same time it did not have many regular troops. Facing the Fifth Infantry Battalion and other affiliated troops led by Wang Shanxu at that time, it was simply unable to withstand it.
If you analyze the battle examples of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty in such detail, you will find that the New Army of the Tang Dynasty has never fought even a large-scale siege in an upright manner.
This attack on Liping Mansion was most likely the first large-scale formal siege that the new army of the Tang Dynasty had encountered.
This was the first time they engaged in such a formal siege operation. Many officers of the First Infantry Regiment, and even Hao Bainian himself, were a little uneasy. Although they guessed that the enemy forces in the city could not be too strong, they still did their best.
Prepare.
For example, the bombardment has never stopped since it started at noon. The three 500-pound artillery pieces continued to fire at a slow rate of fire.
At present, the rate of fire of this type of suppressive artillery fire and the emergency rate of fire in battle are higher in the sky than on the ground.
At present, the artillery of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty is almost the same as the bronze front-loading artillery used in the following centuries. At the same time, in order to increase the rate of fire, the gunners of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty have been training day and night.
Turn the many actions of firing artillery into the gunners' instincts.
Moreover, a self-taught method of division of labor and cooperation was adopted. For example, some people were responsible for loading the shells, some were responsible for loading the propellant, some were responsible for cleaning the barrel after firing, and some were responsible for resetting the artillery after it was fired.
When a cannon is fired, it requires eight gunners.
With so many people working together, the rate of fire is greatly increased.
However, in addition to the cumbersome or simple shooting process, what limits the rate of fire of an artillery is the quality of the artillery itself.
After the artillery is fired continuously and rapidly, its barrel is continuously subjected to huge pressure and high temperature, and the quality requirements for the barrel are quite high. Artillery barrels with poor quality can easily explode.
Except for the most critical moment of the battle, the artillery will completely ignore whether the gun will explode. In daily combat, especially in the current suppressive shooting mission, the artillery will greatly reduce the rate of fire of the artillery in order to protect the artillery.
.
It often takes five or six minutes for a shot to be fired, and after firing continuously for half an hour, it will stop for half an hour.
Therefore, the artillery of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty outside Lipingfu City always fired several shots at intervals, but this intermittent bombardment was endless, lasting from noon to late afternoon and approaching evening, and the city wall was also subject to continuous bombardment.
And suffered considerable damage.
Naturally, the artillerymen of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty would not fire randomly, let alone hit one point in the east or one point in the west. They would only focus on one place to shoot.
Moreover, the distance of more than three hundred meters is completely within the effective range of these artillery guns, and the hit rate can be controlled within a considerable range.
The same place on the city wall was continuously bombarded. If this happened more times, more serious damage would naturally occur.
For example, close to the north side of the East City Gate Tower, a section of the city wall with a width of only five meters was concentratedly fired by two artillery pieces of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty from the beginning of the bombardment. It was hit from noon to evening, with countless bullets. The shells falling from the city wall could almost
It was piled up on a small hill, and this section of the city wall was also subjected to concentrated shelling. First, the outer wall fell off, then cracks appeared in the wall, and finally began to collapse in a small area.
Although it has not completely collapsed yet, if it continues to be bombarded like this, it will collapse sooner or later.
This situation caused great panic among the defenders inside the city, but the generals of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty outside the city were somewhat dissatisfied.
The battle lasted all afternoon, and hundreds of shells were fired before and after, but still could not destroy the enemy's city wall.
This reminded Hao Bainian and the others of those 800-pound heavy artillery in the artillery battalion.
"The power of these 500-jin artillery pieces is still too small. If we had a few 800-jin artillery pieces, their city wall would have been destroyed by this afternoon!" said the deputy commander of the 1st Infantry Battalion.
Battalion Commander Huang Xueren sighed.
Even though the difference between 500 jins and 800 jins seems to be only 300 jins, there is actually a huge difference in power between the two.
Hao Bainian said: "There are not a few 800-jin cannons in the artillery camp now. I'm afraid it will take a month before we can gather an artillery team with 800-jin artillery!"
"By then, we will be able to use these 800-jin artillery pieces, and the workshop of the Ministry of Industry is working on 1,300-jin artillery pieces. Maybe we can also use these thousand-jin heavy artillery pieces by then!"
When Hao Bainian said this, he couldn't help but look forward to the Ministry of Industry providing those heavy artillery pieces as soon as possible.
If there were those 1,300 kilograms of heavy artillery, the city wall of Liping Mansion might not be able to withstand a few cannons and would collapse!
Hao Bainian, who was outside Liping Prefecture, did not know that the artillery workshop established by the Ministry of Industry of the Tang Dynasty in Xingquan Prefecture had already begun the trial production of 1,300 kilograms of artillery, and the first prototype of the cannon was already manufactured.
Once it comes out, it’s time to conduct a live-fire test.