Chapter 408: 408 Inexplicable artillery battle

 Chapter 408 408 The inexplicable artillery battle

This goblin officer seemed to be very disdainful and had no intention of answering the 1st Battalion Commander's question. The 1st Battalion Commander waited for a few seconds and found that the other party seemed not to answer his question at all, so he nodded.

He looked at the embarrassed 2nd Battalion officer and said, "I'll give you a chance to call back..."

The officer of the 2nd Battalion was at least 1.78 meters tall. After hearing this, he looked at the goblin officer who was only about 1.45 meters tall, with a cruel smile on his face.

The goblin officer was stunned. Before he could react, a fist grew bigger and bigger in front of his eyes.

Amid the exclamations of the remaining goblin prisoners, the goblin officer was punched in the face by an officer of the 2nd Battalion.

At this moment, his world was colorful, and only chaotic pictures remained in his mind. He thought of his grandfather and seemed to see his own butt.

 After walking around in circles for about a while, the goblin officer finally realized that he might have been beaten. But before he could prepare for defense, he was hit hard by another powerful and heavy uppercut on the chin.

His brain entered a shutdown state again, and his whole body couldn't stop leaning back. He took three steps back, but still couldn't stand still, and fell directly onto the sand.

The goblin prisoners behind the goblin officer started to commotion, but the bright bayonets and the black muzzles of the guns brought them back to their senses. Everyone watched helplessly as their commander was pinned to the ground and being repaired with punches.

“How did you discover us and deploy here in advance?” Looking for another prisoner at random, the 1st Battalion Commander patiently asked the same question.

"We are not deploying in advance, we are temporarily changing defenses..." The goblin who was asked the question glanced at the commander who was being beaten on the ground with the corner of his eye, and replied with a swallow of saliva.

"Temporary defense change? How many people do you have?" 1 The battalion commander vaguely felt that things were not that simple.

 “A legion…” The soldier knew everything, obviously he didn’t want to be beaten.

"We defeated 1 battalion... This means that there are still 2 battalions of enemy troops nearby." An officer looked at the commander of the 1st battalion and reminded him.

"Let the 2nd Company cooperate with the 3rd Battalion to deploy a defense line along the bushes! Prepare to resist a new round of enemy attacks!" The 1st Battalion Commander immediately made a judgment: "The 2nd Battalion, help mount the 105 howitzer OK! We may need artillery support."

"Stop fighting! Wait for the regiment commander to handle it!" Looking at the officer of the 2nd Battalion who was riding on the opponent and shaking his fists, the commander of the 1st Battalion stopped him.

Standing up with **** fists, seeing the goblin officer lying on the ground with only the strength left to groan, the officer of the 2nd Battalion spat and turned around to assign tasks.

Soon, the troops in the landing site began to mobilize. Some people were helping to set up cannons on the beach. Soldiers carrying weapons began to set up defensive positions against the direction of the enemy's charge.

Just as the 1st Battalion Commander had estimated, the troops of the Mirage State finally obtained some information from the defeated troops and found out that the landing force was not the Zheng Guo Fish Belly that they had been fighting against before.

 Zheng's troops were weak in combat effectiveness and generally did not dare to initiate attacks. Moreover, once they fell into hand-to-hand combat, they would often be defeated quickly.

This is also the reason why the troops of the Mirage State did not form a square formation and directly launched a charge, trying to drive the Datang Group's landing troops into the sea by relying on hand-to-hand combat.

 They were used to hand-to-hand combat, so they tried to use the most familiar tactics to deal with the enemies in front of them.

But what they never expected was that this time they were not facing the Zheng Guo's belly army, but the Tang Dynasty troops with powerful combat power and fierce firepower.

The feeling of being kicked against the iron plate was not good. The commander of the Mirage Kingdom found that only less than one-fifth of the troops of the battalion he sent came back!

 An entire battalion of troops lost their combat effectiveness, either intentionally or unintentionally, which made the commander of Mirage feel a crisis.

As the prisoners said, this mirage army just happened to be passing by. They were transferred nearby and prepared to go into the mountains to search for the Zheng civilians who were hiding.

 As a result, someone saw the black smoke on the sea, and then discovered the landing force of the Datang Group. Subsequently, after confirming that there were less than 500 people on the beach, the commander of Mirage State deployed his troops and sent a battalion to launch a tentative attack.

Who knows, this temptation, temptation collapsed a camp...

 After realizing that the enemy was very powerful, the commander of the Mirage Kingdom decided to change his tactics. He has already launched follow-up troops, and he still has an advantage in terms of strength.

But he was more afraid of the continuous gunfire mentioned by the defeated soldiers. Almost all the defeated soldiers described the intensive gunshots from the opponent...

 So, he took his own response—shelling!

Since the opponent seems to be very strong in terms of individual guns, let’s use longer-range cannons to regain the situation first.

 Wait until the other side falls into chaos, and then use superior forces to engage in hand-to-hand combat, defeating these fools who don't know how to provoke the mirage in one fell swoop. After thinking about the tactics, the bombardment of the mirage army began. More than a dozen muzzleloader guns were lined up in a row, aimed at the beach, and fired.

The solid artillery shell suddenly passed through the bushes and flew across the beach, startling the Datang Group's landing troops.

The battalion commander felt that the gods had played a joke on him today. From the moment he started commanding the landing troops, everything seemed to go wrong.

It was originally a silent landing, and there was no thought of encountering an enemy attack. As a result, during the chaos of the landing, we inexplicably encountered a counterattack by enemy troops.

The 2nd Battalion Commander suddenly had a whim, asking the soldiers to give up their baggage and weapons to ensure safety, so that the precious first batch of landing troops would have at least one-third more "non-combatants" who could not participate in the battle, which further weakened the Improved the combat effectiveness of the Datang Group's landing troops.

It's good now. Before his defense line has been deployed, the opponent's artillery fire has begun... Although it is only a solid bullet, it is still an artillery shell after all!

Seeing a cannonball whizzing over the soldiers' heads and smashing into the sea, the 1st Battalion Commander felt that he was not well.

“Where is the artillery? Can we fire back?” He looked at the adjutant beside him, pointed to the distance where smoke was starting to rise, and asked.

"There are no parameters! Sir! You can't just shoot blindly, right?" the adjutant explained to the artillerymen awkwardly.

 They only have one artillery and cannot do any coverage shooting, so accuracy is very important.

 After all, we don't even know whether the opponent's location is high or low. If we blast it with this big cannon, it probably won't have any effect.

The commander of the 1st Battalion, who also knew this, gave up the idea of ​​letting his own artillery participate in the battle and began to think of another way.

The enemy's artillery fire was not very accurate and was completely blind. So it looks fierce, but in fact it has no effect at all.

Most of the time, the blind cat will not be able to hit a dead mouse, and it is unlikely to hit a high-value target if it fires randomly with solid bullets.

Most of these shells didn’t even know where they hit, except for one shell that hit the beach, splashing gravel and making a group of soldiers who had just landed disgraced.

"We can't let them fight blindly like this anymore! No one can afford the loss if they accidentally hit a shot!" When I saw a solid bomb crashing into the sea, the water column stirred up was only ten meters away from a small boat. When the distance was less than 1,000 meters away, the 1st Battalion Commander felt that sitting still and waiting for death was not an option.

“Even if it’s just to scare them! Let the 105 howitzer fire!” He knew that although there was only one artillery piece, the high-speed and powerful artillery of the Datang Group was completely incomparable to the Cyric muzzleloader.

Just when the adjutant was about to deliver the order, the goblin artillery fire suddenly stopped. The 1st Battalion Commander was stunned for a moment, and then realized that...the opponent's artillery could not keep up with the reloading speed.

"The enemy's artillery fire...has stopped...then, are we going to fight back?" the adjutant asked with some uncertainty.

"Huh..." After exhaling a breath, the 1st Battalion Commander thought for a few seconds and made a decision: "Let's wait for now! Since their rate of fire can't keep up, let's wait a little longer!"

 After he finished speaking, he issued another order: "Organize troops for reconnaissance! Determine the location of the opponent's artillery..."

Before the battalion commander finished speaking, the sound of the air being torn apart came from above his head. The terrifying scream made everyone on the beach shrink involuntarily.

 More than a dozen shells roared past, crossed the beach, and landed on the other side of the small bush where the white smoke had not completely dispersed.

The next second, fire shot into the sky, the earth trembled, air waves carried broken branches and swept everything around, and explosions resounded throughout the sky.

Those were shells fired by the 150mm caliber artillery of the naval cruiser. These shells crossed the beach, also passed over the troops of the Mirage, and landed farther away, turning an open space upside down.

It turned out that the observation post on the naval warship, which had never been aware of the exchange of fire on the shore, saw the white smoke left by the firing of the front-loading cannon.

That was obviously not our own artillery fire, because most of our own howitzers were still waiting to be unloaded on the ship. The surprised navy realized that the concealed landing might have turned into a storm, and the troops on the shore were being attacked by the enemy!

Bernard, as the supreme commander on the battlefield, immediately ordered the warships to open fire to cover the landing troops. For fear of accidentally hitting friendly forces, he made a temporary decision to raise the muzzle a little bit...

As a result, these shells passed over the beach, passed over the heads of the Mirage troops, and landed farther away, blasting a lonely place.

But fortunately, the naval guns on the naval battleships have semi-automatic loaders and a high rate of fire, so they slightly adjusted the muzzle and soon fired a second salvo...

 Two updates today

 (End of this chapter)