Jagged Warlord

A plume of black smoke came from far and near, and a gunboat on the Yangtze River was sailing downstream, and the two large characters on the copper nameplate on the midship of the ship were particularly eye-catching: Hai Chi.

As the most powerful war machine of the Beiyang Army at present, the cruiser "Hai Chiu" has been cruising back and forth on the Wuhan River for a whole day. The coal bunker has been filled with high-quality coal from the Pingxiang Coal Mine, and the boiler has been filled with water. , the whole crew was full of fighting spirit, the fire in the machine room was blazing, and the pressure of the steam engine was rising steadily. Now, it is slowly sailing down from the upper reaches with full confidence, continuing to carry out the bombardment mission against the Jiangbei SS.Two 2mm Krupp rapid-fire guns on the left and right sides of the bow, one 1mm Krupp rapid-fire gun on the stern, and eight 150mm Krupp rapid-fire guns distributed on both sides caused a lot of trouble to the SS in Jiangbei.

The captain of the Haichou is Du Xigui, named Shencheng, Shenchen, and named Shizhong. He is from Minxian County, Fujian Province. He graduated from the Jiangnan Naval Academy. He once led the naval fleet to suppress the Wuchang Uprising. military.After Yuan Shikai's death, Du Xigui returned to the Beijing government.In July of the sixth year of the Republic of China (1917), Cheng Biguang prepared to lead his ships to the south to protect the Dharma, and sent Du Xisi and Lin Songzhuang to lead the two ships "Chuguan" and "Haichou" to the north to take the President Li Yuanhong to Shanghai. Before leaving , Cheng Biguang also specially allocated 7 yuan to the second ship as a launch fee. No, Duan and Lin couldn't withstand Duan Qirui's temptation after they arrived in Beijing, so they stayed. Knock on the deck and scold the two for treachery.

Beiyang warlords Cao Kun and Zhang Huaizhi led their troops to attack Hunan.Du Xigui led the five ships of the Second Fleet, "Chu Guan", "Jiang Kun", "Jiang Li", "Jiang Xi" and "Jiang Zhen" to sail in by water to support the land offensive.The Hunan-Guangxi Allied Forces have no navy and are at a disadvantage.With the support of naval naval guns, a regiment of the Beiyang Army captured Chenglingji, a key pass of Jiangfang, and the Beiyang Army occupied Yueyang.Du Xigui led the ships to cross Dongting Lake and attack along the Xiangjiang River, and cooperated with Cao Kun's Third Division of the Beiyang Army to occupy Changsha, and the Southern Army retreated without a fight.

However, the war situation in the north changed, and the SS army approached the Han River. Duan Qirui had to mobilize Du Xigui's navy to cruise around the three towns of Wuhan to resist the invincible SS army on land.

The SS was a little troubled by this, so after the coordination of the General Staff, they formulated a battle plan to break the blockade of the Beiyang Army on the Yangtze River.It is said that when Li Mohan accepted the German and Austro-Hungarian armed forces in China, he captured two inland river gunboats.

One is Vaterland.Manufactured by the Shuoshaw Shipyard in Elbing, Germany, it was originally a German gunboat used in China's inland rivers. It was detained by the Chinese government on March 1917, 3 in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and renamed "Lisui".With a displacement of 20 tons, 170 coal-fired boilers, two-shaft propulsion, 2 horsepower, 1300 feet long, 158 feet wide, 26.3 feet draft, 2 crew members, and a speed of 45 knots.Equipped with one 13-caliber 1mm howitzer (bow), one 30-caliber 88mm 1-pound gun (stern), and two machine guns. <Manufactured by the shipyard, it was originally a gunboat used by Germany for inland rivers in China. On March 40, 50, it was detained by the Chinese government in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and renamed "Lee Jet".Displacement is 4 tons, 2 coal-fired boilers, two steam main engines, two-shaft propulsion, 1917 horsepower, 3 feet long, 20 feet wide, 266 feet draft, 4 crew members, speed 1300 knots, equipped with 177.6 26.7mm 2.7-pound rapid-fire Cannon, 45 machine guns.

The Hairong cruiser is in the Northeast, and will not be able to return for a while. These two warships are currently the only surface ships that Li Mohan can use. If these two inland gunboats are to fight against the cruisers of the Beiyang Army, it is undoubtedly Mantis. Arm block car.Naturally, Li Mohan wouldn't be so stupid as to use an egg to touch a rock. His plan was to follow the example of the later cannonball attack on amethyst, and use another cannonball to attack a cruiser.

海筹上的3门150毫米克虏伯速射炮和分布于两舷的8门105毫米克虏伯速射炮听着好像口径很大很唬人，其实射程并不远，最大射程不过7000米到8000米左右，最佳射程在4000米之内。当年甲午战争，日军的伊东佑亨就是命令日本海军此类口径火炮在3000米左右才开火。

After careful study, the artillery unit that bombarded the Amethyst was equipped with three Japanese-made 75mm field guns and three Japanese-made 105mm howitzers. And the number is large and the mobility is good.It is not impossible to reproduce the effect of infantry cannoning warships like cannoning Amethyst.

The SS first launched an attack on Hankou Town, and the route and steps of the attack were surprisingly consistent with the marching route used by the Qing army to suppress the Wuchang Uprising.The SS and Wang Zhanyuan's [-]nd Division Infantry, [-]rd Brigade, and [-]th Infantry Regiment exchanged fire in Liujiamiao.

Influenced by Li Mohan's artilleryism, Shao Jianfeng still uses cannons as his main force. On the artillery positions of the SS, straw bales filled with mud and sand are piled up thickly to form a half circle, with only a one-foot-wide gap exposed in the middle of the front, forming a In the temporary artillery bunker, a slope was dug out evenly behind the gun position, so that when the position needs to be changed, the cannon can be quickly pulled out for transfer.

The artillery regiment of the divisional artillery regiment is equipped with artillery from 75mm to 120mm. There are more than a dozen artillerymen squatting behind each artillery, some of them are holding paper and pens. The Ministry is going to take this rare opportunity for actual combat to let many new gunners learn how to use field guns more intuitively.

"fire!"

With the waving of the small red flag, the artillery shells shot out, and in the blink of an eye, several black and red gunpowder smoke rose above the opposite Liujiamiao Railway Station, and large blocks of bricks and tiles flew up under the explosion.

After a full 20 minutes of artillery fire coverage, the SS sent infantry to launch the attack without haste. First, the heavy machine guns entered the battle position, shooting obliquely to cover the infantry, and focused on suppressing the wide front of the railroad tracks. Get out, keep your body low, and cover each other.

The soldiers in charge of attacking the SS soldiers have also jumped out of the bunkers, spread out and charged forward. Judging from the postures of the soldiers when they were running, most of the soldiers were able to run with their bodies down, and the infantry line was relatively wide apart. After running for a while, it will lie down to cover the comrades behind.

At the beginning, charge with the company as a unit, use the whistle as a signal, run to about 400 meters to disperse and reorganize the squad, and quickly lie down and push the gun forward. There is no optical sight at this distance and it is difficult to hit the creeping enemy.After crawling for about 120 meters, the accompanying light machine guns took the lead in spreading out and relying on rock piles or trees to fire, or used grenades and mortars to suppress the Beiyang Army's positions.The rest of the infantry continued to crawl, and when the whistle suddenly sounded sharp after a distance of [-] meters, everyone jumped up and charged.

The soldiers who charged overlappingly arrived at the front of the station very quickly. Since Liujiamiao is a township, the terrain is wide and easy to defend and difficult to attack, so even with the cover of machine guns, soldiers can still be seen falling down from time to time.The introduction of infantry means that the competition has become fierce, and the machine guns dare not fire casually at this time in order to avoid accidental injury.However, SS soldiers are equipped with a lot of submachine guns, which take a lot of advantage in close combat.Often a grenade was thrown over, followed by a burst of submachine gun fire, and the Beiyang soldiers were either killed or surrendered, so it didn't take long to occupy Liujiamiao.