I want to be emperor

Chapter 1135 320 Armored Vehicle

The navy began to use the sea to control the land in overseas colonies such as Europe. It created a bunch of offshore combat ships and used them in military suppression battles in Europe, and performed well.

As the other major service of the Chu Empire, the Army will naturally not let the Navy stand out.

In the process of suppressing the rebellion of the great nobles in the southern part of the Kingdom of England, the army also tried to use a series of new equipment and new tactics.

A variety of armored vehicles and transport vehicles have been put into combat, and rigid airships have also been used for aerial reconnaissance... As for aircraft, the Army Air Force is still in the process of exploring the application of aircraft, and there is currently no aircraft officially used in reconnaissance operations. troops, let alone dispatching aircraft combat units to deploy overseas for combat operations.

Therefore, the air power currently available to the Chu Army in overseas areas is still dominated by airships, and the number is actually not large. The Chu Army only has one airship squadron in the British region, equipped with four rigid airships...

In the process of suppressing the rebellion, these four rigid airships also played a certain role. They took off when the weather was good and then maneuvered over the rebel-controlled areas to conduct long-term aerial reconnaissance and took a large number of aerial reconnaissance photos.

Let the Chu army's ground troops have a clear idea of ​​the enemy's military deployment before entering the war zone.

Then a fast mobile force composed of armored vehicles and transport ships launched a rapid experimental attack...

This mobile force attack is also one of the rare occasions when the Chu Army used large-scale regular troops in overseas operations... Most of the time, the Chu Army's regular troops generally do not go to the battlefield in person, and most of the time they provide firepower from the rear. For tasks such as supporting, serving as a supervising team, and strategic support point, as for the troops that directly go up to fight the natives, they are usually foreign legions.

But this time, the Chu people organized a regular army of about hundreds of people. These regular armies were equipped with more than a dozen armored vehicles and dozens of cars, as well as more than a dozen 75mm artillery pulled by 15 cars. There were also numerous infantrymen marching in cars.

Among the hundreds of regular troops of the Chu army, no mules and horses were used... This is a very important feature. This is the first time that the Chu army completely abandoned mules and horses in actual combat and fully used vehicles.

Although the size of the army this time is very small, with less than a hundred armored vehicles and transport vehicles combined, its significance is huge... There is a group of army generals behind this who are paying attention to the actions of this small motorized army. .

The motorized battalion set out from Dover, and then went all the way towards the rebels in the southwest... However, it also encountered many troubles along the way. For example, the local road conditions were not good, and the purely motorized army was mobile against them. The road requirements are relatively high, making it difficult to maneuver.

In addition, this kind of high-intensity maneuvering also makes the vehicle prone to various failures, and after a failure occurs, it is difficult to repair it immediately in the field.

In addition to these two points, the Chu Army also discovered that... although these motorized armies do not use horse fuel... they also have a relatively large demand for fuel. The most important thing is... the gasoline used by the vehicles cannot be obtained locally, and even They are not available throughout Europe and can only be transported from distant territories.

This results in relatively high oil supply costs!

Under many troublesome circumstances, this motorized battalion, which had less than a hundred vehicles, finally successfully reached the front line with less than two-thirds of the various vehicles. The rest suffered breakdowns or accidents along the way. , such as falling into a river, getting stuck in a mud pit and other problems and broke down... This made many army generals in the rear who were paying attention to the actions of the unit very dissatisfied.

But... despite all the problems, when this motorized battalion marched for hundreds of kilometers and finally appeared on the front line, the huge combat effectiveness it displayed made everyone suppress their dissatisfaction.

After only eight armored vehicles were left on the frontline battlefield, they were almost killing Gods and Buddhas... The indigenous rebels were almost unable to cause any effective damage to these armored vehicles, and the smoothbore cannons could not hit them. , the rifle cannot penetrate...

The heavy machine guns mounted on these armored vehicles can easily kill a large number of enemy troops.

Conservative estimates suggest that these eight armored vehicles alone may have caused more than a thousand casualties to the indigenous rebels...

This result is almost equivalent to that of the artillery unit... This is actually rare in contemporary Chu army operations.

As the power of artillery became more and more powerful and the accuracy became higher and higher, the Chu army actually relied heavily on the killing and killing of artillery units in combat...I don't mean to say dependence, but because it can use artillery to explode without letting the infantry risk getting close to hundreds of people. rice and fight the enemy.

It is obvious that artillery can be used to kill the enemy at a leisurely distance, so there is no need to let the infantry take risks.

The single-shot rifled rifles and even muskets in the hands of the natives can also cause damage to infantry. Therefore, in order to avoid casualties, the regular troops of the Chu army rarely let the infantry rush forward in most cases...

This also means that the infantry individual equipment such as the Type 27 repeating rifle, which seems to be very important and advanced, is useless in most cases...the infantry have no chance to shoot at all.

Generally, various artillery bombardments take turns, including 75mm field artillery, 70mm infantry artillery, 60mm and 80mm mortars, one after another, and then machine guns are used to carry out bombardment over a distance of several hundred meters or even up to 100 meters. A thousand-meter long-distance strafing... When such a circle is defeated, the natives on the opposite side are basically finished, and the infantry can just go up and clean up the battlefield.

The infantry of Chu State actually rarely hold rifles and shoot at enemies within two to three hundred meters like in war movies, or even engage in hand-to-hand combat... Even though the infantry of Chu Army have a huge advantage in individual firepower.

Of course... this is limited to frontal large-scale confrontations. If the natives hide to fight guerrillas, engage in ambushes, or conduct ambushes in the city, the Chu army's infantry will inevitably use rifle fire and even cause infantry casualties.

In response to this situation, the Chu army's early response method was to take the land but not the people... Later, the colonial model could no longer be implemented in this way, so they changed their approach to establish a large number of foreign legions, and let the indigenous soldiers of the foreign legions bear this kind of responsibility. High-risk patrol and cleanup combat missions.

But even so, in fact, regular soldiers of the Chu Army deployed overseas will suffer sporadic casualties every year... After all, accidents are inevitable, and war is not simply about the performance advantages of weapons. With the advantages of the US military's weapons and equipment, in In places like Iraq or Afghanistan, facing militiamen with only AKs, they still suffered many casualties in various unconventional attacks.

Not to mention these public security combat modes, and in formal combat, the Chu army generally tends to use artillery to solve problems. This is why the Chu army has many kinds of artillery, and in contemporary times, it is equipped with 60mm mortars at the infantry company level. , at the infantry battalion level, they are equipped with 70mm infantry guns and 80mm mortars, which directly strengthen the 75mm mountain guns or field guns when the infantry regiment is operating.

The Chu army generally does not use infantry to fight against enemies that can solve problems with artillery.

Even if infantry is used to fight, machine guns are used to fight... As for rifles, most of the time they are actually emergency and self-defense weapons.

This situation has changed to a certain extent after the Chu army was equipped with experimental armored vehicles... The front-line troops of the Chu army began to ride armored vehicles directly to the front line, risking to get close to the enemy only a few hundred meters away. The Chu army took advantage of the fact that armored vehicles were difficult to be hit by smoothbore artillery, and were hit by rifles without any problems. They attacked the indigenous rebels unscrupulously... Not only did they kill a large number of enemy troops, but they also greatly improved their machine guns. The hit rate is high, thus saving a lot of machine gun bullets.

Subsequently, several armored vehicles belonging to the motorized battalion of the Chu Army directly entered the city with a large number of foreign legions, using the powerful firepower of the vehicle-mounted machine guns to provide powerful fire cover for the indigenous infantry of the foreign officers... In turn, These indigenous infantry can also provide peripheral cover for armored vehicles to avoid being sneaked over by indigenous people, and then use smoothbore cannons to attack stationary or slow-moving armored vehicles.

The huge combat effectiveness of armored vehicles in suppressing indigenous rebellions made the army's top brass very excited!

After the battle on the front line ended and the relevant battle reports were sent back to Jinling via telegram, some senior army generals made it clear that armored vehicles had fully proven their value on the battlefield and it was time to officially purchase and equip armored vehicles on a large scale. Instead of testing equipment like now.

Against this background, in March of the 53rd year of Chengshun, the Army went through a series of preliminary tests of equipment and testing, and finally selected three types of armored vehicles as the Army's standard armored vehicles for large-scale equipment.

One is the '320 armored vehicle' jointly developed by Hebei Special Motorcycle Company and Tangshan Automobile Company. The total combat weight is tons. It is equipped with a -horsepower engine specially developed by Tangshan Automobile Company for engineering vehicles, tractors and other heavy-duty vehicles. It adopts Eight wheels at the rear and double steering wheels at the front, a total of ten wheels - the reason why there are so many wheels is that the tire technology is a bit poor, and we cannot make very good big tires, so we can only use more slightly smaller ones. The tires bear load, reduce ground pressure, and enhance off-road capabilities.

The maximum highway speed reaches 55 kilometers per hour, and the off-road speed can reach 20 kilometers per hour.

The front body armor and the armor at the top machine gun position reach 10 mm, and the side armor reaches 8 mm.

In the middle of the car body, an 360 mm caliber vehicle-mounted air-cooled heavy machine gun that can rotate ° is mounted, and an mm vehicle-mounted machine gun is mounted in the front of the car body, that is, in the passenger seat, which can provide A large sector of fire ahead.

This thing... In Luo Zhixue's opinion, it is not actually an armored vehicle, but a light tank... Of course, the main weapon of this thing is not an artillery, but a large-caliber machine gun.

But its protection mode and combat mode are actually very similar to tanks... This thing adopts a comprehensive protection concept, with armor protection on the front, rear, left and right, and a raised machine gun tower in the middle. This machine gun tower can still rotate 360°.

Just look at the upper part of this thing. If you don’t look at the running mechanism below, it’s actually not much different from a tank.

In addition, this thing is not used to carry infantry, but to directly rampage on the battlefield to provide firepower.

This type of 320 armored vehicle has performed very well in actual combat tests in England and India. It has a low accident rate and excellent off-road performance. The mm heavy machine gun on it has extremely powerful firepower... It can easily destroy some simple weapons of the enemy in actual combat. Use civil fortifications and buildings to kill enemies hiding behind buildings.

Even if the enemy is hiding in a building, conventional buildings cannot block the continuous strafing attack of this kind of 11mm heavy machine gun... The Chu army has done tests on its own, using an 11mm heavy machine gun to fire specially designed weapons for this machine gun. Pointed bullets can be fired at a twenty centimeter thick cement wall. After using about dozens of bullets, a large hole with a diameter of twenty centimeters can be made...

A single bullet may not be able to penetrate a twenty centimeter thick cement wall, but if bullets are fired continuously to penetrate the wall, it can easily penetrate the cement wall.

As long as there are enough bullets, for example, one or two hundred rounds, you can punch a hole in a half-meter-thick cement wall.

Of course, the premise is to always aim at a point to shoot!

If it were the penetrating power of a single bullet, it would naturally not be that strong... But this one is not that strong and is only relative to a cement wall dozens of centimeters thick.

When attacking wooden buildings often used in many indigenous countries, the machine gun's single-shot penetration capability for ordinary wooden boards can reach approximately 40 centimeters...

what does this mean?

Therefore, in actual combat, even if you are hiding behind a tree half a meter thick in diameter, you cannot stop the enemy from firing at you with a large-caliber heavy machine gun.

Because a heavy machine gun of this level can easily break up an entire tree with multiple rounds of fire... In this case, the people hiding behind the tree will be directly beaten into pieces!

The 320 armored vehicle is equipped with a heavy machine gun of this level. Its power is indescribable. It also has a long range and accuracy. No one expects this thing to have high accuracy. Anyway, it is more accurate than artillery.

The Army was very satisfied with the 320 armored vehicle, so after deciding to equip the armored vehicle on a large scale, it used this armored vehicle as the main large armored vehicle.

One hundred and eighty hundred vehicles were directly ordered and delivered in batches to equip various troops.

In addition to large armored vehicles such as the 320 armored vehicle, we also purchased the Guangzhou II light armored vehicle developed and produced by the Guangdong and Guangdong Arms Company. This armored vehicle is relatively small, with a six-wheel design and only an eight-millimeter heavy machine gun firepower, but it is relatively cheap. , the reliability is also good, and the off-road passing ability is also considered top-notch.

Therefore, the Army also purchased a batch.

Finally, there is a small armored vehicle developed and produced by Jiangnan Weapons Company. This thing is a four-wheeled small armored vehicle, which is okay in all aspects.

A total of three types of armored vehicles have been purchased and put into service by the Army on a large scale. If nothing else, these three types of armored vehicles will become the main armored vehicles of the Army for many years to come.

As for the three-wheeled armored vehicles that were also listed in the armored vehicle sequence in the early days, they have now been expelled from the armored vehicle sequence, because according to the Army's definition of armored vehicles, armored vehicles must have armor protection capabilities.

A tricycle equipped with only a machine gun has no armor protection capabilities and is an open vehicle.

Therefore, this type of tricycle equipped with a machine gun is only classified as an ordinary transport vehicle, and most of these side tricycles do not come with a machine gun, but are only equipped with a machine gun mount... It is worth mentioning that the heavy machine gun is comparable This tricycle is much more expensive.

The machine gun mount of the three-wheel motorcycle is quite special. It can be directly installed and used with the 8mm 43 series air-cooled heavy machine guns or even the 42 series water-cooled heavy machine guns in active infantry units...

To put it bluntly, something like the Bian Sangun just provides the machine gunners in the infantry unit with a mobile stand for mounting machine guns...