Chapter 424: Crushing Siege

Chapter 424: Crushing Siege

Chapter 424: Crushing Siege

Tbilisi is a city at the foot of a mountain. On the Surolak Mountain, the ancient Narikala Castle is mottled and full of the vicissitudes of time, looking down at the city that has suffered so much below.

Tbilisi is recognized as the "birthplace of wine" in the world. It was built in 1416. This ancient castle has existed since the day it was built.

Since then, the history of Tbilisi has been forever linked to protracted wars and short-lived peace, the ruthless destruction of war and the large-scale post-war construction, prosperity and decline.

Now, at the foot of the mountain, another battle has begun that will cause great damage to the city.

On the east bank of the Kura River, teams of Ottoman soldiers, fully armed, holding guns and crouching, rushed to the west bank from several bridges.

In the trenches on the opposite west bank, countless Maxim machine guns and Hotchkiss rapid-fire guns formed a cross-fire network, blocking several bridgeheads.

Dozens of sampans loaded with soldiers rushed to the other side and became targets of machine guns and rapid-fire cannons.

Soldiers' bodies kept falling into the river, and the blood dyed the Kura River red. Several bridges also became death roads for the soldiers to charge.

Some soldiers took a detour from the bridge upstream and downstream. Once they crossed the bridge, they found a huge wooden sign on the opposite side with large red letters in Ottoman and Georgian, "There are mines here, please take a detour."

"boom!"

Limbs and guns flew everywhere.

The Huai Army’s warning was real. There were real landmines, one after another.

Among the four divisions and one brigade of the Huai Army that participated in the siege, the Guards Brigade was a generalist and did not have a dedicated engineering battalion. The engineering battalions of the other four divisions were fully mobilized, and the mines were buried for dozens of miles along the west bank of the Kura River.

If the Ottomans wanted to attack from upstream and downstream, it would take several days to clear the mines, and they would be of no help on the main battlefield.

This - the Huai Army came to attack Tbilisi, so how did it become the Ottoman army attacking the Huai Army's strong position?
Well, the Ottomans were forced.

They were originally prepared to defend to the death, but then they found that defending to the death was not a solution.

The Huai Army first built solid trenches and fortifications on the west bank of the Kura River, and then sent engineering battalions to plant mines upstream and downstream along the west bank of the Kura River. It is estimated that tens of thousands of mines were buried.

Then, the heavy artillery division's 150 Krupp mm heavy artillery and field guns from three divisional artillery battalions began to bombard the Ottoman positions on the east bank.

Yes, the number of heavy artillery divisions of the Huai Army did not increase, but the number of artillery pieces increased from 100 to 200. This is because the emergence of recoil artillery reduced the labor required to reposition the artillery by half, so more people could serve as gunners.

Shao Quanzhong is a fanatical believer in artilleryism and has the traditional Chinese "fear of insufficient firepower". As far as possible, the more cannons he has, the better.

This is actually very consistent with the art of war. Napoleon once said, "Victory in war depends on the use of decisive firepower in the decisive area."

Artillery, especially large clusters of heavy artillery, is the most powerful unit for delivering firepower, no doubt about it.

The Maxim is the best weapon for killing people, new soldiers are afraid of cannons and old soldiers are afraid of machine guns, these are all empirical sayings that only appear in China where artillery is extremely scarce.

The carpet bombing by large clusters of giant artillery left no grass behind, which was the biggest culprit for the deaths in World War I and World War II in history.

Historically, during World War II, the German army had no fewer artillery than the Russians, but the Germans distributed heavy artillery to each division. The Russians completely followed Napoleon's war theory, and the divisions were not equipped with heavy artillery, and all heavy artillery was used together. They went even further than Shao Quanzhong, forming a reinforced artillery division with 3000 heavy artillery pieces, a destructive unit. In the Kharkov counterattack, they poured tons of artillery shells on the German army in half an hour.

The result of the war was that of the 30,000 German troops, 10,000 were directly destroyed in the bombing, and the rest were routed and their morale collapsed.

On Shao Quanzhong's side, the participating troops included Xu Bangdao's troops, four divisions and one brigade, including two tank divisions, one mechanized infantry division, one mechanized infantry brigade, and the other was a heavy artillery division.

This artillery ratio is unparalleled in the world and absolutely insane.

Being bombed by the enemy's artillery is not a big deal. The problem is that our artillery cannot hit the enemy.

The entire Ottoman Empire's Third Army had a total of 180 artillery pieces, most of which were field guns. Only 60 of them were assigned here to guard the rear, all of which were field guns.

Previously, the Ottomans obtained the secret of TNT explosives from Shao Quanzhong, which increased their ambition to join the war, but they had no smokeless gunpowder and no artillery recoil device.

Smokeless gunpowder increased the range of heavy artillery from 3.8 kilometers to 7 kilometers.

The recoil device accelerated the firing rate of heavy artillery from one to two rounds per minute to three to five rounds.

At the same time, since smokeless gunpowder does not leave residue after burning, the process of cleaning the barrel is eliminated, and the firing rate of heavy artillery has increased from three to five rounds to five to ten rounds.

The result was that the Huai Army's heavy artillery had a firing rate several times faster and a range several times longer than the Ottoman Empire's light field artillery.

The bombardment from two hundred heavy artillery pieces and thirty-six field guns continued without stopping, extending all the way back.

If this continued, the Ottomans would all be killed by artillery shells just by sitting there and getting bombed, without any infantry charge.

As a last resort, Mohammed Yusup, who was promoted to major general, had to order his soldiers to attempt a charge and attack the Huai Army's defensive positions to prevent the enemy artillery from continuing to act so recklessly.

Since the Huai Army was fully mechanized, there was no problem of individual soldiers carrying heavy loads. The Huai Army's 37mm rapid-fire cannons and Maxim machine guns were equipped to squads, and 47mm rapid-fire cannons were equipped to the company level.

The infantry firepower of the Guangxi New Army defending the position was also insane, with machine guns and rapid-fire artillery fire points scattered throughout the position.

The Ottoman field artillery had just knocked out two of the enemy's machine gun fire points, but the effect was minimal. Its deployment position was exposed and it was immediately dismantled into parts by the enemy's heavy artillery cluster.

Without the protection of artillery, the soldiers crossing the narrow bridge and charging across the river were completely exposed to the crossfire of the Gui army, and could not even reach the barbed wire in front of the position.

The bridge was littered with the bodies of the charging soldiers, and the Kura River was filled with floating corpses, changing the color of the water.

The Gui army's grenades and grenade throwers were ineffective, and the Mauser rifles were rarely used. The machine guns and rapid-fire cannons alone made it difficult for the enemy to move forward.

The artillery units were not disturbed at all and continued to bombard all places where the enemy appeared. One third of Tbilisi city had become a scorched earth.

A division of Ottoman guards lost 3,000 men in artillery fire and 2,000 in the charge, a loss of more than 35%, and morale collapsed.

Led by Yusup, the Ottoman defenders blew up the bridge over the Kura River to stop the enemy and fled in panic. Tbilisi fell in half a day.

(End of this chapter)