Chapter 258 Infantry-Tank Coordination

Chapter 258 Infantry-Tank Coordination

Chapter 258 Infantry-Tank Coordination
"Bang! Boom!"

Sporadic gunshots rang out on the battlefield, as the scouts of the two warring parties fought for their lives.

Soon the gunfire died down. Lucia's scouts were still equipped with muzzle-loading carbines, and were at a serious disadvantage in the exchange of fire, so they simply retreated.

Tashkent is located on the alluvial plain of the Chirchik River oasis west of the Tianshan Mountains. The right bank of the Chirchik River is flat and the Huai Army of more than 60,000 people can be fully deployed.

The vanguard Lin Bozai Division stopped three miles away from the enemy and began to adjust its formation.

The follow-up troops came in rows and quickly found their own combat positions.

This is the advantage of having professional staff. The coordination ability of various troops in large-scale battles is greatly enhanced.

At the front of the rear, behind the central army, engineers quickly built a watchtower.

Shao Quanzhong and Grant stood side by side on the watchtower, observing the enemy from afar with binoculars.

The commander-in-chief of this battle is Grant, but the complicated military deployment has been completed before. The current commander of the battle is Emery, who is in front of the center army and behind the vanguard.

"The big picture has been finalized, but Emery is better than me in terms of specific tactical command."

Shao Quanzhong agreed with this point. Emery was almost the strongest staff officer in the world. Grant's advantage was his overall view and quick decision-making in dealing with emergencies. In fact, he replaced Shao Quanzhong as the commander-in-chief.

As for Shao Quanzhong himself, he had now been promoted to a politician. He was responsible for firmly grasping the loyalty of the troops, deciding who to attack and where to attack, and then handing it over to Grant for command.

Shao Quanzhong and Grant were in charge of the reserve forces in the rear to deal with possible emergencies on the battlefield. The routine battles of the front army had been handed over to Emery.

Grant put down the telescope, looked at the heavy artillery troops slowly advancing on the flank, and nodded.

"Emery's command was well organized and he controlled Lin's urge to attack immediately. The first step was to knock out the enemy's artillery.

The enemy has two divisions out of the city, one infantry division and one cavalry division. They are equipped with a field artillery brigade and a cavalry artillery brigade, and we need to guard against the enemy's cavalry artillery brigade's surprise attack. Come on, let the reserve force, the Torghut Independent Cavalry Reinforced Division, be ready to support the central army at any time."

Since the Battle of Wuwei six years ago, when Grant joined the Huai Army and began to train cavalry for the Huai Army, Shao Quanzhong had already told him that he would have to fight a battle with the Russians in the future.

The current war is not an encounter battle, the Huai Army has been preparing for it for several years.

The Huai Army was well prepared for this battle, and the enemy was hastily prepared. The Huai Army was three times the number of the enemy, and had superior equipment, so it was certain to win.

What Grant is thinking about now is how to minimize unnecessary losses and win beautifully.

"Sir, you chose the perfect time to attack Lucia. Lucia is in a turbulent period caused by the abolition of slavery. The enemy's morale is unstable and they will collapse earlier."

Shao Quanzhong actually didn't think about this, but he just happened to catch up. Now the Huai Army Intelligence Department has become a world organization, possibly the first intelligence organization spread all over the world.

The Russians are in chaos, or the news from the Russian Women's Volunteer Team in St. Petersburg...

The battlefield where 80,000 people were confronting each other was silent and the atmosphere was depressing, until the hot air balloon of the Huai Army's heavy artillery unit rose up, and the whistling sound of shells fired by more than 200 heavy artillery pieces broke the eerie silence.

The Huai Army's heavy artillery unit was transferred from the rear army to the front army and deployed on the right wing near the Chirchik River.

The first shot in the battle between the two sides gave Governor Kaufman a surprise. The opponent had no martial ethics and actually used siege artillery to attack my field artillery brigade!

By the way, how did your siege artillery overcome all the difficulties and dangers and get to Central Asia?
The souls of the 80,000 slaves who died in the Tianshan Gorge: Look at the mass graves beside the Tianshan Gorge Road. The range of the siege artillery far exceeds that of the field artillery. Kaufman was extremely depressed. I can't fight back when I'm being beaten. Uh, it seems that I have no chance to fight back.

As the cannon fired, the number of the Huai Army's siege artillery units was exposed: there were as many as twenty-one companies.

More than two hundred shells landed accurately on the Lucia artillery positions, 180-pound TNT shells. With the earth-shaking explosion, the Lucia artillery positions were gone, leaving only spare parts on the ground - both gunners and guns.

Seeing the amazing explosive power of the enemy's artillery shells, Kaufman's eyes went dark.

That's it. The enemy must have mastered the secret of some new type of gunpowder. We are falling behind.

This battle is basically hopeless, my great Lucia Empire——

The commander could not be discouraged just because the enemy had advanced firepower. Kaufman shook his horse twice and immediately ordered, "The Lancers and Hussars will attack and destroy the enemy's artillery."

Two regiments of more than a thousand regular Russian cavalry responded to the order and attacked directly towards the Huai Army's heavy artillery unit.

Yes, the Russian cavalry had lancers, the kind that carried three to five meter long lances. In fact, lancers were not backward, and were used by Britain, France, Germany and Russia until the 1930s.

In the Battle of Baliqiao, Senggelinqin's Mongolian cavalry was finally defeated by the Indian Lancers armed by the British.

Of course, modern lancers are also equipped with carbines, but the close combat weapon is replaced by the saber. The current lance is also much lighter, sharper and stronger than the medieval one.

Grant himself was best at using cavalry, so how could he not guard against his artillery units being ambushed by enemy cavalry?

Seeing that the enemy's two regiments of about 1,500 cavalrymen were gradually accelerating from a trot, the artillery escort troops raised their carbines, and then four Gatling machine guns that were specially designed to protect the heavy artillery troops opened fire.

After the invention of the breech-loading rifle, the tactic of frontal charge by cavalry units became obsolete, and they were only able to resort to surprise attacks.

The Russians had just gotten the breech-loading rifle and had not yet started training. Their cavalry tactics had not yet been adjusted. Not only were their weapons backward, but their tactics were also backward.

The guards of the artillery position here not only had breech-loading rifles to restrain the cavalry, but were also so crazy as to be equipped with machine guns. The charge of the artillery position of the Lucia regular cavalry became a bloody and tearful charge.

Seeing the cavalrymen falling off their horses one after another under machine gun fire, without Kaufman's order, the two cavalry regiments turned around and fled back, leaving behind 800 corpses.

The Huai Army's heavy siege artillery was not in a panic at all. After destroying the enemy's artillery in the first step, they immediately began to adjust the parameters and bombard the enemy's trenches.

While the Russian cavalry charge was repelled here, the light field artillery units and other artillery with shorter range had moved forward and joined the bombardment of the enemy trenches.

The soldiers in the Lucia trenches in 1867 enjoyed artillery suppression on the scale of World War I. Violent explosions continued to ring in their ears, and occasionally a shell would happen to hit the trench, leaving a pile of bloody parts.

The charge horn of the Huai Army's vanguard sounded, and the first to charge was Song Qing's armored brigade.

Three hundred steam tractor armored vehicles made of riveted simple steel plates with holes punched in the steel plates to reveal shooting and observation ports appeared on the battlefield for the first time.

Lin Bozai waved his command knife, and a regiment of soldiers crouched down, holding rifles, and followed the armored vehicle.

This was the first coordinated infantry-tank charge on the battlefield in the world, fifty years earlier than the British Army's first coordinated infantry-tank charge in the Battle of Cambrai in 1917.

(End of this chapter)