Chapter 769: 769 Datang main force
Chapter 769 Chapter 769 The main force of the Tang Dynasty
When Liu Guozhu arrived at the outskirts of Fengjiang City, their mission had changed from assisting the 7th Army to attack Fengjiang City to expanding the defense line to both wings of Fengjiang City.
In other words, their mission is to attack the two wings along the periphery of Fengjiang City, pretending to surround Fengjiang City, and threaten the two wings of Fengjiang City.
So, while the 7th Army was fighting house by house with the Dahua troops stationed in Fengjiang City, the 1st Armored Division of the Tang Army began to engage in a fierce battle with the Qin Army on the flanks of Fengjiang City.
A Leopard tank moved slowly on the battlefield. Liu Guozhu, sitting in the commander's position, carefully searched for places where enemy troops might appear.
In such an unsafe place, he would not easily stick his head out: before, a Tang Army tank commander was shot by a sniper and died because he stuck out his upper body to direct the battle. Therefore, the Tang Army Armored Troops Car captains began to be strictly required to pay attention to their own safety.
Putting his face against the gap in the observation window and looking at the smoke filling the battlefield through the narrow gap in the observation window, Liu Guozhu saw a messy battlefield.
There were bomb craters everywhere and destroyed trenches everywhere. Some corpses can still be seen vaguely next to the crater, most of which are from the Qin Army, and a few from the Dahua Army.
"Left front!" Liu Guozhu saw a suspicious target. There seemed to be something hidden there: "11 o'clock direction! It seems to be an anti-tank gun! Can you see it?"
"I think I saw it!" After adjusting the direction of the turret, the gunner put his face against the sight and replied: "I'm not sure. It might be a false target, or it might be a destroyed artillery position..."
As soon as he finished speaking, he saw a sudden flash of light over there through the scope. After the flash, a diffuse white smoke rolled out.
"Whoop! Dang!" A shell roared in an instant and directly hit the front armor of the Panther tank.
However, this shell did not penetrate the thick front armor of the Panther tank. It bounced off the sloped armor and flew to the side.
The huge force made the advancing tank tremble, as if it had been hit hard by a hammer, and Liu Guozhu was also frightened.
“We’ve been hit!” the radio operator shouted nervously. There was only a layer of armored steel plate between him and the shell.
"I know! It hasn't been penetrated!" Liu Guozhu reassured his men loudly: "After taking aim, fire! Stop the car! Stop the car!"
The Leopard tank stopped lightly on the spot, and the machine guns and rifles of the surrounding Qin army began to fire violently. The bullets hit the tank, hitting the armor on the tank like raindrops.
"Boom!" The Leopard tank fired a shell. However, due to the hasty aiming, the shell hit the earth bunker in front of the Qin army's anti-tank gun position, changing the trajectory and being hit by the shell. It flew far away.
"Missed! Missed!" Liu Guozhu shouted loudly as he saw his shells flying out.
"I know! High-explosive bombs! Load high-explosive bombs this time!" the gunner shouted loudly, and then the loader pushed a high-explosive bomb into the barrel.
“Loading completed!” After the breech block was closed, the strong loader reported loudly, and the gunner fired the second shot immediately after.
This artillery shell once again hit the mound slightly in front of the bunker, but this time the shell was not bounced away. Instead, it exploded immediately after hitting the bunker.
The rising smoke obscured the view, and there was no way to know whether the anti-tank gun position had been destroyed.
However, under the command, the loader pulled out a grenade from the ammunition rack beside him and pushed it into the gun barrel.
“Loading completed!” After the action is completed, the loader confirms loudly.
“Forward! Forward!” Liu Guozhu ordered loudly.
Following his order, the exhaust pipe at the rear of the Panther tank that had just been hit ejected a stream of black smoke, and its huge body began to move forward again.
Liu Guozhu once again looked at the smoke through the observation window in the slightly shaking tank. He wanted to determine as soon as possible whether the anti-tank gun that threatened their tank had been destroyed.
In fact, the so-called anti-tank guns are their internal names. These artillery are not necessarily professional anti-tank guns, but the enemy uses them to attack tanks.
Even if it is a howitzer or anti-aircraft gun, as long as it fires at a tank, in the eyes of tank crews, this artillery is a standard "anti-tank gun."
"Pay attention! The anti-tank gun position just now! I'm still not sure whether it has been destroyed!" Liu Guozhu reminded his gunner loudly.
The gunner was also very cautious: "Understood! I'm staring at it! The other party didn't continue to fire, it seems..."
Before he finished speaking, another artillery shell flew towards him. This time the shell did not hit Liu Guozhu's tank, but hit the side of Liu Guozhu's tank, splashing a piece of mud. The opponent used a solid bullet that would not explode. It looked very much like the armor-piercing bullets used by the Tang Army themselves. It's just that the chamber pressure of the opponent's artillery seems to be insufficient, and the armor-piercing ability seems a bit poor.
"It's still firing! It's still firing!" Seeing that his tank was almost hit again, the gunner was so frightened that he shouted loudly.
"I saw it! The original position! Around 11 o'clock! On the edge of the smoke! Can you see it?" Liu Guozhu saw the enemy artillery that was firing at them through the gap.
"Stop! I'm ready to fire!" While moving, the hit rate cannot be guaranteed, so the gunner shouted loudly.
“Stop!” Liu Guozhu gave the order skillfully.
He could see through the gap in the observation window that the enemy's position in the distance was nervously adjusting their artillery in preparation for the next firing. Both sides are racing for time, preparing to eliminate their opponents with the next shot.
The Panther tank swayed slightly and then stopped. The enemy's artillery position that had been within the gunner's gun sight became stationary on the scale line.
The gunner stepped on the firing pedal, and a shell flew directly out of the muzzle, pierced the air, hit the side of the anti-tank gun position, and kicked up a piece of soil.
"It's off! You missed!" Liu Guozhu, who had been observing, saw the impact point of the cannonball. Compared with the first time, the impact point of the cannonball seemed to be a little more off.
“Damn it!” the gunner cursed, and shouted again: “Loader! Keep up the high-explosive rounds!”
"High-explosive shells! Load!" The loader immediately pulled out a new shell after hearing the order, pushed it into the barrel, and closed the breech: "Loading is complete!"
Compared to those tanks with high targets, anti-tank gun positions hidden in the positions are sometimes more difficult to deal with.
With their good bunkers and concealed appearance, these artillery pieces that were used as temporary anti-tank weapons were very threatening, and they were also one of the most hated opponents of the Tang Army tank crews.
"Boom!" A puff of white smoke rose up from the opponent's position again, and a shell landed not far behind the side of the Panther tank.
The opponent also missed, and another excellent opportunity was wasted. In this kind of sudden battle in a short period of time, the shooting accuracy is actually not very high, and it needs to be constantly corrected by the rate of fire.
Obviously, the rate of fire of the Tang Army's 75mm long-barreled gun was higher. The Panther tank stopped in place and completed reloading, then opened fire again and fired a shell.
This time, the Qin defenders' good luck seemed to have run out. The shells directly blew away the cannon's shield, as well as the stumps of some artillery soldiers.
The Tang grenadiers following the Panther tanks began to charge. The loud bugles resounded in the sky, and the Qin army's defense line naturally collapsed once again.
It seems that when facing the attack of Tang troops, the brave and capable Qin army collapsed faster and faster, and their defense line seemed to be getting weaker and weaker.
"What kind of monster is that? What kind of monster is that?" He watched helplessly as his own 76mm anti-aircraft gun fired flatly. It clearly hit the strange tank that he had never seen before, but the shell bounced off the tilted front armor of the tank. "It's gone," a Qin soldier shouted in fear.
A tank that cannot be destroyed is a nightmare for infantry. The Qin army concentrated its firepower in the hope of destroying the Tang army's Leopard tank, but found that this new tank was much stronger than the No. 4 tank they had faced before, both from the front and the side.
After many efforts failed, the Qin army began to retreat. They began not to understand why the Tang Army had so many advanced weapons that they could not fight, nor why the Tang Army had so many artillery shells that they could not finish them all.
In many fierce battles, the Qin army has clearly recognized the gap in weapons and equipment and firepower density between the two sides, and the huge losses have exceeded the previous expectations of the Qin generals.
This made the Qin army begin to re-examine this war that had nothing to do with them in the first place, and think about why they continued to risk their lives against such a difficult opponent.
On the one hand, they had to continue to bind the Great China Empire to fight against the rise of the Tang Kingdom on the east coast.
On the other hand, they have some thoughts that they did not dare to think easily before: Is the hegemony of the Great China Empire destined to collapse, and is the day of Qin's rise coming?
Under the entanglement, the performance of the originally pure and sturdy Qin army on the battlefield changed somewhat. The intuitive reaction to the battle is that the Qin army began to preserve itself and began to retreat more naturally.
They figured it out, but the Great China Empire had to lose important defensive positions for this. In just one day, a quarter of the defensive positions outside Fengjiang City were captured by the 1st Armored Division of the Tang Army.
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Two updates today and more tomorrow.
(End of this chapter)