1850 American Gold Tycoon.

Chapter 663: Kani Fortress Group

The so-called Kearny Fortress Group is composed of five star-shaped forts of different sizes along the Pacific Railroad and the Platte River east of North Platte. In the final analysis, it is a variation of the bastion.

The five forts are Fort Gossen, Fort Cozad, Fort Lexington, Fort Kearny and Fort Grand from closest to North Platte.

Among them, Fort Gossen, Fort Cozad, and Fort Lexington are small and medium-sized forts, while Fort Kearny and Fort Grand are large forts. The defense system constructed by these five forts is called the Kearny Fort Group, and the command center is located in Fort Kearny.

The five forts took advantage of the hilly terrain and were built on hills with higher altitudes, overlooking the Platte River and controlling the Platte River waterway and the Pacific Railway.

This is why, after the conflict between the West and the North intensified, the Western Army was unable to take actual control of the section of the Pacific Railway from North Platte to Omaha, which clearly belonged to the California Railroad Company: the Northern Federation built a fort next to the railway and could cut off the railway at any time.

Of course, this is why Liang Yao had to fight this battle. The Pacific Railway is the lifeline of transportation connecting the East and the West. Without complete control of this railway, there is no way to talk about immigration and development of the Great Plains.

The five fortresses of the Kani Fortress Group are not located at a very high altitude, so it is impossible to hold the pass with one man against ten thousand. However, as long as the strategy is proper and the quality of the armies and weapons of the attacking and defending sides are at the same level, it is still possible to hold the pass with one man against ten.

There are two main types of forts in the United States. One is the coastal fort, which usually has walls 5 to 8 feet (about 1.5 to 2.5 meters) thick.

The coastal forts were designed with the powerful British Royal Navy as their enemy, and needed to resist the bombardment from naval guns, especially the powerful 32-pound or larger cannons at the time. Therefore, the walls of coastal forts in the United States were usually very thick, and expensive and hard bricks and stones were chosen as building materials.

More than a month ago, Fort Sumter, which the Confederate Army attacked, was an expensive coastal fortress.

To be fair, as far as Fort Sumter itself is concerned, the performance of the fortress is not bad, and it can even be called the conscience of the American civil engineering community.

Although an unfinished fortress, Sumter withstood the bombardment of tens of thousands of artillery shells, almost consuming all the ammunition in South Carolina's stockpile.

If it weren't for the Confederate Army's good luck and one shot hitting the ammunition depot on Fort Sumter (there is also a saying that Anderson set fire to the ammunition depot on Fort Sumter in order to surrender legitimately), and Anderson himself and his soldiers had low morale and did not have the determination to defend Fort Sumter.

The Confederate Army might not have been able to capture the half-finished sea fortress of Fort Sumter so quickly. Fort McHenry, where the Union Army was stationed to control the situation in Maryland, was also a typical coastal fortress in the United States.

Another type of fortress is the inland fortress. The Kearny Fortress group that the Western Army is now attacking is a representative of the inland fortresses of the United States.

Compared with coastal forts, the walls of inland forts were relatively thinner, usually 2 to 5 feet (about 0.6 to 1.5 meters) thick, because the imaginary enemies of America's inland forts were Native Americans and the Mexican and Canadian colonial armies.

These hypothetical enemies rarely have heavy weapons, so the walls of inland fortresses are only required to be able to withstand the bombardment of 12-pound artillery. Only some important inland fortresses on the US-Mexico and US-Canada borders will have this design indicator raised to be able to withstand the bombardment of 24-pound artillery.

In terms of the choice of building materials, inland fortresses mostly choose civil engineering for cost-saving considerations. The three small forts, Fort Gossen, Fort Cozad, and Fort Lexington, all use civil engineering as the building material.

According to the information Liang Yao obtained, the federal government had a plan to cover the walls of all the fortresses in the Kearny Fortress Group with bricks and stones, but it was limited by various objective reasons such as limited time, insufficient funds and manpower.

Among the five fortresses of the Kearny Fortress Group, only Fort Kearny had its outer walls covered with bricks and stones. After all, the cost of building a brick and stone fortress in the central border area is several times that of a civil fortress.

As for the introduction of iron, steel and concrete as building materials in large quantities for the reinforcement of fortresses, it was not until the late Civil War at the earliest.

The three small forts, Fort Gossen, Fort Cozad, and Fort Lexington, are very close to each other and relatively easy to attack. Therefore, in the combat plan formulated by the General Staff, the first ones to be attacked are Fort Gossen, Fort Cozad, and Fort Lexington.

As small forts, Fort Gossen, Fort Cozad, and Fort Lexington did not have many garrisons. Except for Fort Gossen, which was located on the front line and had three companies of garrison, Fort Cozad and Fort Lexington only had two companies of garrison each.

The participating troops advanced both by land and sea, and each unit quickly arrived at the designated location and began to set up camp.

Major Alex of Fort Goshen saw a large number of Western troops heading east, and was so frightened that he quickly sent someone to the telegraph room to send a telegram to call for help. The Western troops heading east by train and boat were so huge that there were at least 30,000 to 40,000 people. With only three companies under his command, even if he occupied the advantageous terrain of Fort Goshen, it would be difficult to stop the main force of the Western troops.

Alex sent envoys to negotiate with the Western Army, warning them that they had entered federal territory and demanding that they withdraw immediately.

After the North and the West became enemies, a vague boundary spontaneously formed in the Nebraska region, which is roughly 20 kilometers east of Goshenburg.

Of course, this boundary is only a customary boundary, and there is no explicit stipulation that this is the official boundary between the American Republic and the Northern Federation.

The Western Army naturally ignored Alex's warnings and protests, and continued to do what they were supposed to do and act according to the original plan.

Seeing that the Western Army had openly set up camp six or seven kilometers away from Fort Goshen, Alex ordered the firing of artillery to sound a warning after obtaining Mason's authorization.

After just a few shells, the Western Army did not take it seriously at all. Instead, they set up their field artillery, adjusted the firing parameters, and slowly responded to the defenders of Gothenburg with three shots. The last shot even hit the temporary earthen embankment built outside Gothenburg, creating a large hole in it.

Now, the federal garrison in Fort Goshen finally behaved.

These three shots made Major Alex think that his eyes were playing tricks on him. He simply couldn't believe that this scene was real.

The field gun that had just fired at them was at least 5000 yards (4600 meters) away from the earthen embankment that was hit, and the enemy had hit it easily.

It’s not that the Northern Union Army didn’t have cannons with a range of 5000 yards, but it didn’t have field artillery with a range of 5000 yards.

In addition to the exaggerated range, Alex was also impressed by the firing rate of the Western Army's artillery.

Alex is an officer from the artillery, and he is sensitive to the performance parameters of artillery.

Just now, the Western Army fired three shots in succession, which took only about 45 seconds. For heavy field artillery, this is an extremely exaggerated firing rate.

In his early years, Alex used the Napoleon gun (a 12-pound heavy smoothbore cannon howitzer). The Napoleon gun is still the main field artillery equipped by the Northern Union Army and the Southern Confederate Army.

The only difference is that the North has more Napoleon cannons, especially the large Napoleon cannons, which are far more than the South. The Napoleon cannons equipped by the Southern Army are mainly 6-pound small Napoleon cannons, and heavy cannons are relatively scarce.

According to Alex's past experience, an experienced Napoleon gun crew can maintain a firing rate of about 2 rounds per minute under good combat conditions.

However, in a stressful combat environment, as the artillery crew's physical strength is depleted, its rate of fire will soon drop to 1 round per minute. A stable rate of fire of 1 round per minute in wartime is already an elite artillery crew of the federal army.

Alex had heard that the Sacramento cannon used by the Western Army was extremely excellent, with no disadvantages other than the high cost and expensive shells.

However, the Sacramento cannon had only been equipped in the artillery of the Western Army. No one in the Northern Union Army had ever seen or come into contact with the Sacramento cannon. In addition, there were many people in the Northern Union Army who thought highly of themselves and they looked down on the Western Army from the bottom of their hearts.

Therefore, most officers of the Northern Union Army did not pay much attention to the Sacrato cannon, and almost no one knew the specific performance parameters of this cannon. They just thought that the Western Army exaggerated the performance of their own cannon and tried to sell their own cannon to the War Department and Congress.

It now seems that the Western Army not only did not exaggerate the performance of their own artillery, but instead concealed the performance of their own artillery.

Alex thought this was extremely important information, so he quickly ran to the telegraph room and reported the situation to Brigadier General Mason at Fort Kearny.

(End of this chapter)