"Hold on a little longer and you'll succeed soon... Damn it!"
Major General Wilson witnessed everything with his binoculars. It was clear that victory was close at hand, but the soldiers who were about to rush forward retreated.
What a failure!
However, there is still a third wave, and companies B and C of the Hyderabad Battalion can still go into the attack. Now they are trotting to the "jump point", which is the starting point for the attack.
More than a dozen tanks lined up in a row were not idle either. They fired continuously during this gap period to keep suppressing the Ming army's position.
But then a series of shells suddenly fell?
"Boom boom boom boom——"
The formation of nearly 300 people from Company B and Company C was half covered in the blink of an eye, and their movement was stagnant.
After eliminating the threat in the woods, the Ming army in the city naturally wanted to support Highland Zero. Four rounds and sixteen rounds of 80mm mortar shells accurately and timely landed on the third wave of the British and Indian army's upcoming attack. In the army.
There were retreating friendly forces in front of him, and he was bombarded before he even launched an attack?
Obviously, it was impossible to continue the attack in this bad state. To launch an attack forcefully would be to risk death. Wilson reluctantly ordered the attack to be stopped.
The captain next to him picked up the Webley flare gun and fired a green flare into the sky; then, the British and Indian soldiers began to retreat rapidly.
The sun touched the horizon, night slowly covered the entire sky at a speed visible to the naked eye, and darkness fell.
Because hundreds of British and Indian troops were standing between the highlands and the city, communications between the two places had been cut off. In this era when small radios were unreliable, wired telephones were the mainstay of battlefield communications.
After discovering that both the main line and the backup line were disconnected, the command headquarters could only communicate briefly with Highland Zero through signal flares.
Several yellow and white flares were launched into the sky, and soon several flares of different colors were launched over there.
"Yellow, white, red, red, they can't stand it anymore." Zhou Changfeng stood by the window and looked at it, and said calmly: "Get ready to switch defenses."
He really wanted to try a night attack to drive away the British-Indian army stuck in his throat. However, it was not easy to conduct a successful night attack.
This group of British and Indian troops has about 300 people and tanks as its firepower. We need to invest at least one reinforced company-level unit to be able to expel it. If we want to be more secure, we have to invest two.
But now he only has three unsatisfied troops on hand, with a total of about 500 infantry. Unless he fights to the death, how can he spare more than 300 people for a night attack?
After weighing it, Zhou Changfeng gave up this plan.
In fact, in his expectation, the street fighting in the urban area was the most critical finale. This was the best choice based on local conditions.
Different from ordinary troops, due to their special nature, several divisions and brigades of the Forbidden Army have received additional street fighting training - assuming that if a special situation occurs, the Forbidden Army is likely to have a fierce confrontation with its opponents in the city of Nanjing.
In this case, it is natural to reflect the results of the extra training.
The only submachine gun currently equipped by the British Commonwealth Army is the Lanchester submachine gun, which is imitated from the MP18/28. There are not many of them, and they are basically only equipped with the Royal Navy.
In contrast, the Ming army not only has Type 34 portable machine guns produced by Wuchang Arsenal, but also Type 20 automatic guns from Jinling Arsenal.
The former is a quite satisfactory 1930s-style submachine gun - cutting processing, free-action principle, a thirty-five-round curved magazine fed from below, and even a bayonet holder.
As early as during the European War, the military inspection team sent by the Ming Dynasty to Europe had seen the power of submachine guns - the German stormtroopers armed with MP18 were extremely sharp, beating the British and French troops who only had bolt-action rifles in the trenches.
So someone managed to get an MP18 captured by the French army and sent it back to the country.
Unlike many countries that paid little attention to submachine guns, the Ming army liked this new weapon that could spray bullets at close range and was easy to control very much, so they reverse-engineered it.
In addition, the Ming army was implementing the national policy of large-scale encirclement and suppression of bandits in western Hunan and western Hubei at that time. In the deep mountains and old forests, bolt-action rifles were obviously not as effective as submachine guns; the "portable machine gun" that was able to shine has been steadily used since then. It occupied a place among the infantry weapons of the Ming Army.
[The Ming army also discovered that flamethrowers were very effective against bandits hiding in caves and resisting. They could turn ferocious bandits into panicked sheep. The effect is even better when combined with Cl₂ and COCl₂ gases. (Serious.jpg)]
After the MP18 gradually became outdated, it naturally needed to be updated. Therefore, the Wuchang Arsenal designed its own Type 34 submachine gun after referring to the Steyr MP34 and Somi M1931.
As for the so-called "Type 20 automatic gun", it is actually the M1907 semi-automatic rifle that Jinling Arsenal purchased from Winchester Company and improved after the production license. This is a civilian weapon.
【Winchester M1907】
However, during the European War, the French army ordered a batch of special M1907 (semi-)automatic rifles that could fire fully automatically. Someone from the Ming Dynasty military inspection team was very interested in this, so they asked about the price and learned that it was only 28$. I thought I heard it wrong.
It adopts the free-action principle, is fed by 5/10/15-round magazines, fires .351 round-nose bullets, and has a muzzle kinetic energy of about 1800J.
Firearms based on the free-action principle have a simple structure and low cost, but are only suitable for firing pistol bullets with low kinetic energy. In order to enable it to fire high-power ammunition, the designer simply and crudely chose a huge bolt block to suppress the recoil force miraculously.
In short, it has an effective range of 250 meters, can shoot automatically, and is cheap. It can be said that it is very suitable for use by second-line personnel, so the Ming army took it into their pocket. It is worth mentioning that cavalry units also favored this gun. .
The advantages in weapons and equipment can play a huge role in certain situations. Zhou Changfeng believes that if the British and Indian troops dare to blindly engage in street fighting, they will inevitably suffer a lot.
There was no lack of murderous intent in the pleasant summer night. Although the British and Indian troops did not launch an attack at night, they actively carried out reconnaissance and infiltration operations.
They organized a large number of small teams of three, four or eight or nine people, sneaking quietly under the cover of night, trying to find the assembly points, firepower points, and material storage points on the Ming army's front.
The sound spread farther in the quiet night than during the day. Gunshots continued to be heard within a radius of ten miles, sometimes a few short bursts, sometimes a series of crackles, and even the roar of explosions.
The guard posts set up by the Ming army listened attentively to the slightest movement around them. Some people put simple listening devices on their ears, and some threw broken glass shards and empty cans into places where the enemy might be.
The lieutenant, a military doctor who likes to take pictures, performed more detailed debridement on Zhou Changfeng's two wounds, then rinsed them with Dajin's disinfectant, and finally applied medicine and bandaged them.
Zhou Changfeng grimaced in pain, but the military doctor didn't take it seriously. Instead, he took out a small bottle and asked, "By the way, sir, do you agree to take this medicine?"
