LRAB Chapter 48 I Really Have Heavy Artillery
Chapter 48 I Really Have Heavy Artillery
Taihu Plain.
The sky is overcast.
Sometime during the day, the sun overhead was swallowed up by a layer of leaden-gray clouds. Fine, dense autumn rain fell from the sky, silently pattering on the muddy ground.
Zhang Jialiang stood on the roof of the armored train and cursed.
"Damn it! This awful weather!"
His 100,000-strong army is getting soaked in the rain.
When we set off from Changzhou, the weather was sunny and clear. But after traveling less than twenty miles, the weather changed drastically. The Taihu Plain is not like the arid land of the north. Once this low-lying, water-rich rice paddy gets wet, the mud turns into a paste.
He looked down and saw that he had already trampled a muddy puddle on the ground.
The footsteps of 100,000 people turned the field ridges into mud. The wheels of sixty Type 38 field guns were stuck in the mud; the horses pulled desperately, but the wheels wouldn't budge and only sank deeper.
The once mighty army of 100,000 men marching south was stretched into a long snake, thirty miles long, by this autumn rain.
The beginning and the end cannot be taken into account.
"Young Marshal!" A messenger, covered in mud, ran over. "Report from the rearguard division: the 17th Brigade, covering the rear, is still five miles away! The road is terrible; all the artillery pieces are stuck!"
Zhang Jialiang waved his hand impatiently. "Hurry up and get them out of here! They have to reach Shanghai within three days, that's a death order! Who cares about the bad roads!"
The messenger ran off immediately.
Zhang Jialiang turned around and saw Yang Yuting standing at the carriage door, staring at him without saying a word.
"What's wrong with you now?"
Yang Yuting remained silent for three seconds.
"Young Marshal, our ranks are too long."
"So what if it's long? A hundred thousand people aren't afraid to walk!"
"It's not a matter of walking," Yang Yuting said in a low voice. "A marching column, a thirty-mile-long snake, on an open plain... what if the enemy has heavy artillery..."
"I already said, he doesn't have heavy artillery." Zhang Jialiang turned around and glared at him. "Yu Ting, you're my chief of staff, not my fortune teller. Stop saying such unlucky things."
Yang Yuting opened his mouth.
He didn't say anything more.
But his right hand remained in his pocket, his fingers constantly rubbing the cold 75mm cartridge fragment.
Three miles away. Hills to the south.
Chen Zijun held up a pair of Zeiss binoculars, watching the long black snake wriggling in the mud.
Rain dripped down the brim of his military cap and onto the binoculars.
He didn't wipe it.
In the footage, the Fengtian Army's ranks resembled a centipede with its spine broken. Those in front moved haltingly, while those behind were crammed together. Artillery pieces were stuck in the mud, and horses neighed. Curses and shouts filled the air.
There were no sentries. No flank patrols. No formation whatsoever.
It was a 30-mile-long, completely unprepared human dragon.
Chen Zijun put down his binoculars.
He turned around and looked at the hillside behind him, covered with branches and fishing nets.
Beneath the camouflage netting, forty-eight terrifying German-made heavy artillery pieces were arranged in four neat rows. Twenty-four 105mm leFH18 light howitzers were in the front row, and twenty-four 150mm sFH18 heavy howitzers were in the rear row.
The barrels of each cannon were raised high, pointing in the same direction.
The central area of the Taihu Plain.
"Reporting, Commander!" A young artillery lieutenant ran over, stood at attention, and saluted. His eyes were full of excitement. "The First Heavy Artillery Regiment is loaded! The Second Heavy Artillery Regiment is loaded! All forty-eight guns are ready!"
Chen Zijun glanced at him. "What are the coordinates?"
"Report! Foresight grid calibration is complete!"
The artillery lieutenant pulled out a rain-soaked map, covered with red grid lines and blue numbers. "The entire plain has been divided into eight firing zones, from A to H, each subdivided into sixteen sub-coordinates. The enemy's main force is currently concentrated in the area between C4 and D7, approximately six thousand meters deep and less than eight hundred meters wide."
He swallowed hard.
"Commander... this density... it's like a sausage squeezed into a tube."
Chen Zijun's lips twitched slightly.
He didn't comment on the description.
"Test fire," he said. "Fire three 150mm high-explosive rounds first. C5, D3, D6."
The artillery lieutenant was taken aback. "Only three rounds?"
"calibrate the impact points," Chen Zijun said calmly. "I need to know today's wind and rain deviations. Only after confirming the deviations should we open fire."
"yes!"
The artillery lieutenant turned and ran towards the position.
Thirty seconds later, the signal flare was launched.
A red signal flare streaked across the gray sky, trailing thick smoke, and exploded into a scarlet flower in the clouds.
Then, the earth shook violently.
boom!
boom!
boom!
Three deafening explosions rang out almost simultaneously. Three 150mm heavy howitzers fired at the same time, the flames spewing from their muzzles ripping away all the camouflage branches on the hillside. Forty-three-kilogram high-explosive shells shot into the gray sky at a muzzle velocity of 520 meters per second, leaving three almost invisible arcs in their wake.
Flight time: eleven seconds.
Taihu Plain. The main marching route of the Fengtian Army.
Zhang Jialiang is cursing a horse that can't pull a cannon cart.
Then he heard a voice.
whoosh...
It was very light. Like the sound of something sliding down from the clouds.
Zhang Jialiang looked up at the sky.
There was nothing there. It was all gray and hazy.
Then a white light flashed in his field of vision.
Boom, boom, boom! ! !
The first 150mm high-explosive shell landed precisely in the middle of the marching road.
Forty-three kilograms of TNT exploded less than one meter above the ground. The terrifying shockwave spread at the speed of sound in all directions, crushing everything within a thirty-meter radius into dust.
Blood mist.
It's blood mist.
It's not blood, it's not blood clots. It's blood mist.
The Fengtian Army soldiers who were marching in close formation were completely obliterated within forty meters of the epicenter, leaving not even bones behind. The shockwave tore their bodies apart from the inside out, and blood, flesh, and shredded cloth mingled together, turning into a red mist that was pushed outwards by the blast wave.
A crater. Eight meters in diameter. Two and a half meters deep.
One shot.
Just one shot.
More than two hundred people vanished.
The second shot landed more than 300 meters away.
The third shot landed 500 meters to the south.
The effect is exactly the same.
Three enormous bomb craters. Three plumes of crimson blood mist. Eight hundred dismembered corpses.
The entire marching road went from bustling to deathly silent in three seconds.
Then the deathly silence turned into screams.
"Young Marshal!!! Young Marshal!!!"
Zhang Jialiang was dragged off the armored truck by his guards. His ears were ringing and his vision was blurry. The three explosions had been less than 400 meters away from him, and the blast wave had thrown him off balance.
"Wh...what is that?!" He wiped the mud off his face, his lips trembling. "High-explosive shells? Who's firing artillery?!"
No one answered him.
Because nobody knows.
The shells were falling from the sky. They didn't even hear the sound of the shells. First there was a whooshing sound, then an explosion.
I can't see the enemy. I can't see the gun positions. I can't see anything.
Only death falls from the sky.
Yang Yuting crawled out from under the car, his military uniform covered in mud. His left ear was bleeding, but he didn't care.
He grabbed Zhang Jialiang's arm and shouted a sentence with all his might.
"150mm caliber! Range exceeding 13,000 meters! We're finished! This is a heavy howitzer! He has heavy artillery! Young Marshal! He has heavy artillery!!!"
Zhang Jialiang's face turned pale.
It's completely white now.
On the hills.
Chen Zijun put down the binoculars.
Raindrops pelted his face. He squinted.
"Wind deflection correction?"
"Two micrometers to the left!" - Forward report.
"C5 bounced 20 meters north! D3 bounced 15 meters west! D6 hit the center!"
Chen Zijun nodded.
He looked at the artillery lieutenant.
"Correction complete."
The artillery lieutenant gripped the red flag tightly, his hand trembling. Not out of fear, but out of excitement.
He had been waiting for this moment for a very, very long time.
Chen Zijun looked at the long black snake in the distance that was beginning to collapse and spoke calmly.
"The entire artillery regiment."
The artillery lieutenant raised the red flag.
"Rapid shot."
The red flag fell.
Forty-eight heavy howitzers roared at the same moment.
The earth trembled violently beneath our feet, and the entire hillside shook. Flames from the cannons turned the dark sky orange-red. Forty-eight high-explosive shells flew in deadly arcs toward the Taihu Plain.
Steel rainstorm.
Has come.