A field cannon shell accurately hit the archery tower standing in front of Qixing Gate. The ten-kilogram iron ball passed through the chaotic rain of arrows in front of it and directly smashed a bowl-sized hole in the wooden board of the archery tower. Then, hundreds of The shotshells hit the archery tower like a wall, and the Korean archers who were shooting arrows were immediately beaten into sieves, falling to the ground like fallen leaves, and screamed again and again.
Dense artillery shells hit the main wall of the Seven Star Gate, causing wood and rocks to fly around the city. Occasionally, one or two explosive shells landed among the defenders behind the crenellations. Thanks to the reliable delay fuse developed by the workshop, the shells could be guaranteed to reach the target. Fires in a straight trajectory and is not easily detonated. The cannonballs are hollow round cannonballs with wooden sabots.
The hollow iron ball is filled with gunpowder, caltrops, porcelain shards, etc. in the middle to plug the cavity. Once released, its firepower is astonishingly powerful wherever it can reach.
According to the workshop test record: "The marbles (of the blooming bullets) will explode immediately. The ammunition in the bullets contains a lot of sulfur and can be struck horizontally for one or two hundred steps. The bullets will explode into broken iron, and the iron ribs stored inside will all It can run rampant, penetrate the flesh and drill through objects, and one shot can be worth ten shots."
The artillery shells exploded behind each crenel in turn. Each explosion killed and injured a large number of defenders. The North Korean artillerymen guarded the higher Mudan Peak and bombarded the Qi army infantry with general cannons and suspected red-coated cannons from a high position. The artillerymen on both sides fired. There must be a back and forth, Han Zhenyi put down the telescope, a look of pride on his face.
"The Korean artillery is pretty good, but it's not accurate."
At this time, the artillery styles and mechanism principles of both sides were basically the same. They were both muzzle-loaded smoothbore cannons. They still belonged to the era of muzzle-loaded smoothbore guns using black powder as propellant.
It's just that the shape design of Korean military artillery is still a continuation of the red barbarian artillery in the late Ming Dynasty, with slight improvements on the original basis.
Wang Congzhi looked at the artillery position of the North Korean army at Mudanfeng. After a long time, he stroked his beard and said with a smile: "There are many categories, but they are all useless."
Heavy Hongyi artillery, light artillery, and soaring artillery were placed in sequence on the Mudanfeng position. The North Korean artillerymen were as anxious as ants on a hot pot. Although the artillery of the Qi army at the foot of the mountain did not have an advantage, the opponent's attack was farther than them, and it was harder than them. They were accurate, and from time to time they would fire two rounds of explosive shells. The gunner who was hit was completely dead.
"Hey, why are there still Westerners?"
Wang Conzhi was surprised to find that there were several Franjis among the panicked North Korean artillery. Of course, the artillery chief didn't know that these Franjis were artillery instructors hired by Li Zhu with a lot of money, and they were basically from the army. The East India Company arrived.
"The red-haired barbarians also want to help North Korea?"
Han Zhenyi said disdainfully: "Even if the King of Heaven comes, he will have to lie down at our feet. Today, the Supreme Emperor will attack Pyongyang. No matter what cats or dogs he is, as long as they dare to block our way, they will all be killed. Gods will kill gods, and Buddhas will block them." Kill Buddha!"
As he spoke, a harsh whistling sound resounded across the north bank of the Datong River. Thousands of sacred fire flying crows soared into the sky, avoiding the intensive artillery fire from both sides, rising into the sky, and falling sharply like meteors in the dizzying white light. Shooting towards the mountainside of Mudan Peak.
boom! boom!
Accompanied by bursts of dull explosions, orange-red mushroom clouds rose up on the mountainside of Mudan Peak. Rockets filled with viscous petroleum gunpowder burned violently. The dead trees and grass around the mountainside ignited when they encountered fire. North Korean artillery near the mountain forest suddenly exploded. Swallowed by raging fire, a few miles away, countless dancing fireballs could be vaguely seen rolling down the cliff...
The North Korean army stopped retaliating after a few symbolic shellings. Their heavy Hongyi cannon with the longest range could not catch the flying crows that fell to the ground like meteors, and had no power to fight back.
Fortunately, Liu Zhaosun did not plan to turn the area around Pyongyang into a sea of fire. After three rounds of rockets covered the area, the artillery battalion ordered a suspension of rocket launches.
Next, the protagonist of this war became the artillery battalion gunner.
The Qi army's artillery has been standardized in terms of shape and structure. Thanks to the advancement of artillery technology in the workshop, the artillery camp now has cannons with longer barrels and low trajectory, howitzers with medium barrels and curved trajectories, and howitzers with shorter barrels. The land-based mortar has a curved trajectory.
Due to the popularization of fixed ammunition, the artillery firing procedures of the Qi Army's artillery have been greatly simplified, including brushing the chamber, loading ammunition, tamping, setting up the gun mount, aiming, igniting, and firing. The rate of fire is naturally faster.
The rate of fire of various types of artillery of the North Korean army was roughly at the level before the Kaiyuan Army participated in the mixed campaign in the 47th year of Wanli.
Qi's field artillery fires 70 or 80 times in a day, usually requiring 2 gunners and 10 assistants. Small artillery such as the Eagle Cannon can fire 160 times in a day, requiring fewer people." That is, the cannon can fire 80 times an hour. The number of rounds is about 2 times that of small cannons.
The North Korean army's heavy front-loaded smoothbore cannon (red-coat gun) has complicated loading procedures and a low frequency of firing shells.
There is a record of the artillery firing process of the North Korean army in "Hai Guo Tu Zhi": "Cover the cannon door, sweep the cannon bore with a soaked gun brush, then apply the medicine, use a wooden stick to send it into the cannon bore, then drop the marbles, and then use a stick to seal the cannon. Sesame balls, as big as the mouth of the chamber, are stuffed into the chamber so that the medicine does not leak out and the ejection is powerful. After loading, release it. After releasing it, restore it as before, and then load the burst. After four or five shots, you must stop for a while to prevent the gunfire. The whole body is hot."
The Qi army's heavy field artillery has a rate of fire of 3 rounds/2 minutes, which can fire 9 rounds in 6 minutes. The rate of fire of the small artillery is faster than that of the heavy artillery. The rate of fire of the heavy artillery is about 10 times that of the North Korean army's heavy iron shore artillery.
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"Report! The First Corps has crossed the Datong River and arrived at the city. Do you want to attack the city immediately?"
Emperor Wu Ding looked at the messenger kneeling in front of him, cheered up and said loudly:
"attack!"
Teams of firecrackers carried new firecrackers, and under the command of the battalion officers and generals, marched towards the Seven Star Gate city wall with neat steps.
In front of them, about two thousand Korean prisoners had become trench-filling corpses, lying quietly in the trenches dug by their own people.
The auxiliary soldiers carried ladders and pushed carts, and walked with difficulty on the bank of the Datong River. Although Pyongyang was close at hand, it was still far away for them.
The weapons and equipment of the soldiers of the Qi Army have undergone earth-shaking changes, and rifled guns began to replace smoothbore guns.
The rifled gun was not an invention of the Qi people. As early as the late 15th century, rifled firearms had appeared in Europe, and the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian used a rifled matchlock.
However, the spiral rifling was the first to be invented by Liu Zhaosun.
According to the Supreme Emperor, shooting with straight rifling helps improve accuracy and makes shooting more stable, and deeper rifling is more effective.
Song Yingxing and Mao Yuanyi jointly designed a new type of rifled gun. The diameter of the bullet chamber of this rifle was ingeniously designed to be smaller than the inner diameter of the barrel.
This kind of rifled gun uses spherical projectiles that are slightly smaller than the inner diameter of the barrel, so the bullet can be loaded into the barrel smoothly; when the bullet reaches the narrowed chamber, it will be stuck. At this time, use a purge bar to punch hard This will cause the lead projectile to deform and become embedded in the rifling.
However, spherical projectiles will become flat when punched through the bar, affecting the stability during flight, and are not suitable for use on rifled guns.
The two improved the design and developed a tapered bullet, which has greatly improved the stability of the bullet.
When Emperor Wu Ding learned of this, he rewarded the two heavily and promised that after the death of Song Yingxing, Mao Yuanyi and the others, they could enter the Ancestral Temple like Kang Yingxing and Qiao Yiqi.
Emperor Wu Ding believed that with the continuous power provided by the steam engine, mass production of rifled guns would soon not be a problem.
Later, the workshop continued to improve conical bullets until the Migne rifle and Migne bullets appeared. Of course, this was more than ten years later.
By the time of the Eastern Expedition to Korea, as the elite of the entire army, all the fire riflemen of the First Corps had been equipped with the latest rifled guns.
Compared with the previous generation (Type 27 flintlock gun), the Type 31 flintlock gun adopts rifled technology, which increases the gun's range to 500 meters and greatly enhances its accuracy.
It is said that some well-trained snipers can use the Type 31 to suppress the Crouching Tiger Cannon and General Cannon three hundred steps away.
Since the first year of Taichu, the artillery and musket technology of the Qi army has made rapid progress. Of course, the Koreans are not bad either. Their military technological progress is mainly reflected in fortifications.
Under the guidance of the Francois and the shogunate, North Korea completed the field fortification under the military system - the Pyongyang Fortress, also known as the Fortress. Craftsmen twisted clay and tree roots together to make walls and built The walls are as hard as stone and indestructible.
Under the supervision of the experienced Spanish military technician Vasily Naci Baiton, the outskirts of Pyongyang City were built into a bastion-like fortification: on the one hand, its lower and thicker shape improved its defense against heavy artillery; On the other hand, city defense firepower can be deployed to cross fire and cause heavy damage to the attacker.
However, due to lack of time, this "reduced" version of the bastion is very shabby compared to the pure bastion in Europe, but it has made progress compared to the original square and square city of Pyongyang.
~~~~
In the face of the absolute superiority of artillery fire, neither the village nor the bastion is of much significance.
At midnight on November 15th, thousands of golden lights shredded the heavy fog that shrouded Pyongyang City, and everything under the city finally appeared clearly in front of the troops at the head of the West City. Daqi soldiers swarmed over like dark clouds, accompanied by the Qi army's trump card: various types of rockets.
At this time, the Mudanfeng artillery had been completely suppressed by the Qi army's artillery. The Fran cannons placed by the North Korean defenders on the Seven Star Gate had limited power, and most of the artillerymen had already fired the shells before the Qi soldiers attacked. There are seven or eight, used to deal with trench-filling cannon fodder.
As the 3,000 gunners of the First Corps crossed the river and began to shoot at the city wall, the city wall artillery counterattack was unsuccessful. Only the last few archers and shotgun soldiers who had not been killed and burned continued to resist the Qi army.
The battlefield became bloodier and gradually became a one-sided massacre.
As the saying goes:
The crackle of gunfire, the boom of artillery, and the scattering of shrapnel were deafening. At the climax of the charge, the North Korean army was trapped, advancing and succeeding, and there was a sound of killing. The brave are brave, always running and sometimes stopping, corpses litter the fields, and rifles rule the roost.
Lewen
