Chapter Nineteenth: The Heartless Cannon
The commander of the Taxation Police Brigade, Wen Yingxing, who was also the garrison commander of Yongfeng County, deeply agreed with this. Although the Taxation Police Brigade had a powerful backer in Soong Ching-ling, China was too poor and every little bit counted. He estimated that the enemy might be planning to push their mortars forward to bombard the Nationalist army's positions, but the Nationalist army could simply wait for them to open fire and quickly determine the location of their mortars before destroying them. This capability was currently possessed by only a few units in China, mainly those with officers who had studied abroad, and Wen Yingxing himself was a graduate of West Point Military Academy. The enemy's ignorance would surely lead to the demise of their limited artillery forces. Wen Yingxing thought about this and couldn't help but feel a sense of sadness, "Not only is our equipment not up to par, but our tactical thinking is also decades behind that of the West!"
As for why the enemy's trenches were so close, Wen Yingxing thought it was probably because the enemy's artillery technology was not good enough, and they could only take risks to get closer to improve their hit rate. This idea was tested by the vanguard of the National Army in a probing charge, but after being repelled by the Red Army's machine guns, there was no change, although Wen Yingxing's evaluation of the enemy commander had greatly improved. "The opponent's tactical literacy is very high, whether it's the crossfire of machine guns or the rapid transfer after repelling the enemy. Unfortunately, the artillery technology can't be improved immediately by changing a commander, that requires feeding hundreds and thousands of shells. He let the artillery take risks to get so close to the front line, it was also a helpless move."
That night, the Independent Regiment suddenly launched a surprise attack on the National Army's front-line position. Fortunately, the Taxation Police Corps was well-trained and, with Wen Yingxing's timely reinforcements, they managed to repel this nocturnal raid. Both sides suffered several hundred casualties. For the Taxation Police Corps, which had better personnel and equipment, it was undoubtedly a loss, but that is the characteristic of night raids - in nighttime battles, the gap between the two sides' strength is greatly narrowed because many people die from friendly fire. To prevent the enemy from repeating their trick, Wen Yingxing had to dispatch an additional battalion to the front line and ordered them to be on high alert, but he did not expect that this order would cost the lives of these several hundred men...
The next day, just as the sky was lightening in the east, Wen Yingxing, who had not slept all night, suddenly heard a series of dull "thunderclaps" outside the city. In the eyes of the National Army officers and men on the front line, however, many unidentified objects appeared in the sky, flying, rolling, whistling, drawing terrifying trajectories in the air, and then falling densely, hitting their own positions head-on...
It was only a few seconds, and the National Army's position turned into a hell on earth. The National Army officers and soldiers who were ordered to hold their ground were either directly blown to death or mostly shattered by the strong shockwave, or simply frightened out of their wits. Gao Zhicheng was one of the few lucky ones, as he was located in a relatively remote area and managed to preserve his life. However, when the earth stopped shaking, he looked like a terrifying devil from hell, with a fractured eyebrow bone, missing teeth, deaf ears, blurred vision, and fresh blood oozing out of his mouth and nose. His military uniform was also tattered and torn, comparable to a beggar's clothes. He struggled to crawl out of the crater, but as soon as he took a step, he felt his legs go weak, his head spinning with dizziness and nausea, and his whole body shaking violently. He could only kneel down on the ground and vomit loudly...
The positions outside the city of Guo were almost instantly completely destroyed, with trenches filled with corpses, most of which had no visible bloodstains, apparently killed by shockwaves. The ground was in disarray, with overturned earth mixed with shattered wood and tattered military uniforms, even including unexploded explosive packs...
The bombardment of the Independent Division did not end. After destroying the KMT's front-line positions, Hu Weidong decisively ordered the artillery fire to extend forward. This round of shelling was less dense but equally stunning. Wen Yingxing, who rushed out of the house, stared wide-eyed and screamed hysterically, "This is at least a 120mm caliber heavy artillery, how can the bandits have such equipment?"
The National Army within the city completely collapsed. The "bandits" who were originally thought to be poorly equipped and could only rely on human wave tactics actually possessed such terrifying firepower, which had a huge psychological impact on them (note 1), even exceeding the physical harm they suffered. Those National Army soldiers who witnessed the destructive power of the Independent Regiment's "heavy artillery" were like walking corpses, watching as the Independent Regiment's soldiers poured into the city like a tide, and they didn't even have the consciousness to resist...
Wen Yingxing saw his proud elite troops being defeated in an instant, and for a moment he was disheartened. But before he died, he still wanted to see what kind of people the enemy army were and how they could have such fierce firepower. Was it that after Zhang Zuolin's time, China had produced another bandit who liked to play with fire superiority? Unfortunately, he did not get this opportunity, because he raised his hand a little slower, and was considered by a newly enlisted young soldier as resisting desperately, and was shot dead. And about ten minutes later, the county party department was surrounded by the officers and soldiers of the Independent Division, and Kang Ze, the executioner, killed himself in despair in the basement, and his ideal of transforming China with extreme methods naturally went down the drain...
Where did the independent division come from with such heavy artillery? The two new weapons produced by the Independent Division Arsenal, which left a terrifying memory for the National Army, actually had a low technical content, but their initial use achieved an astonishing effect, to a large extent making up for the Independent Division's lack of firepower in attacking fortifications (the flat trajectory of mortars could not destroy enemy trenches, and direct curved fire could only bully those old-fashioned units that did not know about "ring-shaped fortifications", otherwise even if the artillery was accurate, one shot would kill at most two or three enemies, with the Independent Division's current ammunition reserves, it was impossible to consume...
At the beginning, the independent division launched a "flying thunder cannon", also known as the "heartless cannon", which was invented by an ordinary soldier during the liberation war. It used a gasoline barrel buried in the ground as a gun barrel (in fact, it was the soil layer that withstood the huge pressure of firing, not the gasoline barrel), and used the explosive force of gunpowder to throw out explosive packs to kill enemies. Due to its caliber, the "heartless cannon" had great power, even exceeding 150mm heavy mortar, but its range was only a few hundred meters (the standard "heartless cannon" fired an explosive pack weighing up to 20 kilograms, with a range of 250-270 meters and a radius error of about 10 meters). Therefore, when the independent division needed to extend its artillery fire, it had to use the second killer - "super-caliber mortar shells".
Note 1: The effects of being mentally prepared and unprepared are completely different. During the Battle of Shanghai, the Nationalist Army withstood the bombardment of Japan's heavy artillery for so long without collapsing, but during the Battle of Jinzhou, just two 240mm Japanese howitzers caused the defending army to collapse immediately. Of course, underestimating the enemy's firepower and having too dense a formation leading to increased casualties is also an important factor...
