1850 American Gold Tycoon.

Chapter 664: The Federation’s Secret Weapon

At Fort Kearny, 100 kilometers away from Fort Goshen, a batch of secret weapons of the Northern Federation were transported to Fort Kearny via the Pacific Railway.

Brigadier General Mason, the supreme commander of the Kearny Fortress Group, personally came out to inspect the batch of secret weapons. He had gone to great lengths to obtain these secret weapons from the War Department, using all the connections he could.

Mason has high hopes for this batch of secret weapons.

The Western Army was coming with great force. In the current critical situation, Mason did not think he had the ability to turn the tide and could defend the Kearny Fortress Group without reinforcements.

In fact, Mason's goal was never to defend the Kearny Fortress Group, but to delay the Western Army's eastward advance as much as possible and inflict maximum casualties on the Western Army in order to blunt its edge.

Mason knew that Lincoln and McClellan thought the same.

McClellan's delay in sending reinforcements to the Kearny Fort Group was not entirely due to his desire to avoid fighting, but rather he wanted to wait until the second batch of mobilized soldiers were trained and supplies were in place so that he could use his numerical advantage to engage in a decisive battle with the main force of the Western Army.

Although McClellan's actions were reasonable and in line with Lincoln's strategic plan, Mason still felt very unhappy. No one wanted to be the pawn that was easily sacrificed.

When defending a fortress, the most relied upon weapon is undoubtedly the cannon.

However, Mason understood that in terms of artillery, the standard artillery currently equipped by the Federal Army was inferior to the artillery of the Western Army.

This is the conclusion Mason drew based on his own personal experience, or it can be said to be a lesson learned from blood.

Twelve years ago, Mason, who was still an army colonel, led his troops into California. At that time, he suffered losses in front of the artillery of the California Regiment, the predecessor of the Western Army.

At that time, the Spanish Army's artillery was already using rifled Napoleon cannons, which had an advantage in range.

Mason still clearly remembered how the Spanish Army, equipped with Napoleon's rifled cannon, had routed his troops at Jinshan Bay.

Twelve years later, the Union Army's armaments have not improved much compared to twelve years ago. The Napoleon cannons are still the mainstay of the Union Army's field artillery.

The fortress guns used in the defense of the Northern Federation fortresses were mostly 24-pound and 32-pound smoothbore guns produced based on the Napoleonic cannon technology. Some important fortresses were equipped with 42-pound smoothbore guns.

The situation of the Confederacy was even worse than that of the Union. After all, before the separation, the armies of the North and the South were under the same military system, and the equipment of the two armies was almost the same. Considering the weak military industry in the South, the Confederacy was inferior to the Northern Army in the field of artillery.

Fort Kearny is one of the highest priority fortresses in the Federation. It is not only equipped with 24-pound, 32-pound, and 42-pound guns, but these fortress guns are all high-quality new guns. A few of the fortress guns have been modified and rifled, so they can be used as rifled guns. There are also enough shells and gunpowder.

Mason's Fort Kearny was equipped with 128 fortress guns of various types, including 12 13-inch mortars.

Even so, Mason still didn't feel safe at all.

It was rumored that the 12-pound Sacramento gun equipped by the Western Army artillery had an effective range of an astonishing 4000 yards. Mason didn't know whether this was true or just an exaggeration by the Western Army.

After all, the range of the Napoleon cannon of the same level is only 1600 yards (about 1 meters). After rifling, the range of the improved rifled Napoleon cannon has been significantly increased compared to the traditional smoothbore cannon, but its maximum range is only 460 to 2000 yards (about 2500 to 1830 meters), which is still a long way from 2290 yards.

With the attitude of "it's better to believe it than not to believe it", Mason still believed that the Western Army's artillery had a range of 4000 yards, and prepared for defense based on this standard.

According to this standard, the 128 fortress guns in Fort Kearny at this stage are undoubtedly a pile of scrap metal, unable to gain an advantage in the duel with the Western Army artillery.

Even though they were in a dominant position and had the advantage of geographical location, and could increase the range of some fortress guns in disguise, it was still difficult to narrow the performance gap between the two armies' artillery.

The gap between 1600 yards and 4000 yards is simply too huge to be closed by just a little bit of terrain advantage.

To this end, Mason urgently needed a cannon with a range of 4000 yards to defend his fortress.

After learning that the West Point Arsenal in Coldwell, New York, had successfully trial-produced a cannon with a range of 4500 yards, Mason was overjoyed and immediately asked the West Point Arsenal to manufacture a batch of new cannons and send them to the Kearny Fortress Group for actual combat testing.

Mason now has no time to worry about whether the new artillery technology is mature or its reliability.

Considering the special status of the Kearny Fort Group, the War Department also agreed to Mason's request and ordered the West Point Arsenal to work overtime to rush out a batch of new artillery and ammunition to be delivered to Kearny Fort as soon as possible. The secret weapon that Mason was eagerly looking forward to was this batch of Parrott guns. The first batch of Parrott guns sent to Kearny Fort totaled 60 guns, including 30 4.2-pound Parrott guns with a caliber of 30 inches, 20 3.67-pound Parrott guns with a caliber of 20 inches, and the remaining 10 were 2.9-pound Parrott guns with a caliber of 10 inches.

Not only 60 new Parrot guns were sent to Fort Kearny, but also artillerymen to operate these new guns. This was a very thoughtful consideration of the War Department.

Perhaps it was because of his guilty conscience, or perhaps it was because the Western Army had already set out. Considering the interdependent relationship between the Kearny Forts and Omaha, McClellan was finally generous this time. He waved his hand and allocated two fully trained militia regiments to garrison at Fort Kearny along with the artillery of the West Point Arsenal and handed them over to Mason for deployment.

The arrival of the long-awaited reinforcements and this batch of Patro artillery gave Mason more confidence and he finally had some courage.

Mason thought that even if Liang Yao could finally take down a fortress with more than 4000 people and 200 cannons, he would still lose a lot of teeth.

This was the best day he had ever had since he entered the Kani Fortress Group. The reinforcements he had been waiting for for a long time had finally arrived.

Although the militia cannot be compared with the regular corps and the volunteer corps, and is not very useful in field battles, in a siege, as long as the morale of the two regular regiments in Fort Kearny does not collapse, the gap between the militia and the regular corps and the volunteer corps is not as big as in a field battle, so it is not useless.

Therefore, Mason did not care too much that the reinforcements McClellan sent to him were militia, and they were probably second-line militia that McClellan, a stingy man, looked down upon. Mason did not mind too much.

You have to know that Mason had urged McClellan for a month, but McClellan didn't give him any support. This time, he suddenly allocated two regiments to him for the first time, and he didn't even need bicycles.

"The Parrott gun is my country's first independently developed muzzle-loading rifled gun. It uses a special pointed bullet and has a maximum range of 4500 yards (4100 meters). The Parrott gun not only has a long range, but is also more accurate than the rifled Napoleon gun."

Robert Parrott proudly introduced Mason to the cannon that was named after him.

He was full of confidence in the artillery he had developed with great effort. Parrott was very ambitious. He hoped that this artillery could replace the Napoleon cannon and become the standard artillery of the federal army.

Actual combat is the best advertisement. Parrot hoped that this artillery would become famous in the Battle of Fort Kearny, and then gain the favor of the War Department and obtain a steady stream of orders.

Parrott is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, but unlike many of his colleagues, he did not serve in the military after graduation. Instead, he relied on his talents and abilities in the field of arms manufacturing to enter the West Point Arsenal and worked his way up to the position of Director of Ordnance.

If Parrot's cannon could become famous in this battle, Parrot would not only have a good chance of becoming the director of the West Point Arsenal, thereby allocating more resources and giving his technical talents more practical space, but he himself would also become one of the leading figures in the American military industry.

During the years he served as the Director of Ordnance at the West Point Arsenal, Parrott had long since grown from a relatively pure technical talent to a compound talent, no longer simply an engineer who only understood technology.

The Parrot gun can indeed reach an ultra-long range of 4500 yards, but a more accurate and rigorous statement is that the 30-pound Parrot gun can reach a range of 4500 yards when using special pointed bullets and maximum charge.

10磅帕罗特炮的射程则只有约2，000码（约1，830米），20磅帕罗特炮这一数据则为约4，000码（约3，700米）。

"4500 yards!" Mason rubbed his hands excitedly. Obviously he was very satisfied with the range.

Several artillery officers around Mason were skeptical about the data provided by Parrot.

Mason was also well aware of the nature of these arms dealers, who liked to exaggerate the performance of their products. But Parrot personally delivered this batch of guns to Fort Kearny, indicating that Parrot was still very confident in his products. At least the largest caliber 30-pound gun had a range of 4500 yards.

Rumor has it that the large-caliber Sacramento gun had a range of 4000 yards, and the Parrot gun’s maximum effective range of 4500 yards was certainly sufficient in a fortress defense battle.

Seeing that Mason and several officers around him were skeptical about his words, Parrott didn't say much.

Facts speak louder than words. We are ready to fire a few shots to open the eyes of Mason and the officers around him.

The 30-pound Parrot gun was an absolute heavy gun, with the cast iron barrel alone weighing an astonishing 4 pounds (about 200 kilograms).

Fortunately, Mason had already prepared a pulley crane to welcome the arrival of these heavy artillery. After some effort, they finally lifted the heavy artillery onto the thick and solid wall of Fort Kearny and set up the gun in a hurry.

After the heavy artillery was set up, Parrot directed a gun crew to adjust the elevation angle to 38°. After the ammunition was loaded, Parrot personally fired the 30-pound heavy artillery.

Mason and his officers had already raised their telescopes and were observing the landing point of the shells with anticipation.

(End of this chapter)