Lu Ming

On the 60-kilometer road, 1500 battalion soldiers walked steadily for two days after taking the silver and having sufficient supplies along the way.In the end, Wang Deqiao, a military training guerrilla, led his highly motivated subordinates to the outskirts of Shanghai Port built by Xiong Dao on Double 12.

……

The entire port of Shanghai is already under martial law.

Just like when the Lake Bandits came last time, the surrounding commercial and warehouse areas had been vacated, and Daming generously left them for the invaders to live in.

But this time the defense plan is not to lure the enemy into deep: the barbed wire has surrounded the periphery of the port affairs compound, and the low wall has become the main line of defense.At this moment, nearly 200 action members put the Erba Dagai on the wall, waiting for the enemy.

When the morning sun slanted on the faces of officers and soldiers in big red fat jackets, causing them to squint their eyes, Wang Guerrilla, who had already formed an army formation a mile away from the port compound, slapped his hands from his horse... the messenger appeared on the scene up.

In the past few days, Wang Guerzilla has learned the ins and outs of the matter from Song Xiucai, the envoy accompanying the army.Not only did he know the reason, Wang Guerzilla now also knows that the "quick guns" in the hands of the guards behind the opposite wall can hit four to five hundred steps away.

Regarding this information, Song Xiu dared not lie.The gentlemen paid a huge price to invite this army and horses this time, not to use them as cannon fodder like the Lake Bandits, so Wang Guerrilla already knew about the relevant information.What's more, Wang Guerrilla also has his own news channel - the local guard.

Therefore, Wang Guerrilla, who had figured out the situation, already had some calculations in his heart about how to fight this "bandit suppression" war.

First of all, from the moment he learned about the performance of the fast gun, Mr. Wang did not intend to send troops to attack.He knew in his heart: no matter what the outcome of the battle was, once the battalion under his command suffered mass casualties, he would definitely suffer after the inspection by all parties.

Secondly, since the essence of this "suppression of bandits" is that two groups of rich people are fighting for money, it means that the two sides will withdraw their troops and cease fire at any time to reach an agreement.Under such a situation, if Wang Guerrilla was still in a daze and sent troops to Mang Yibo, it would only show that he was politically immature.

Besides, behind the businessman surnamed Xiong on the opposite side is the real deputy commander in chief, who has hundreds of times more soldiers and horses than a guerrilla in his hands.This time Wang Deqiao's troops surrounded Shanghai Port, just to deceive the general soldier's hand that he couldn't reach so far.

However, everyone is in the same military line. Although Wang Guerzilla said he was on Jinshen's ship this time, he didn't intend to do anything wrong... What if he went to Fujian and Guangdong to serve in one day?

Therefore, after synthesizing various intelligences, Wang Guerrilla set a strategic policy for this mission: use pressure to promote talks, and use talks to promote peace.

Now the first step has been completed: just one mile away from the courtyard wall, the 1500 battalion soldiers, who are majestic, full of energy, and sharp-armored, have already set up their formations, with their swords out of their sheaths and their bows stringed up, with a murderous aura. steaming.

At this time, an eloquent yellow-faced soldier sent by Master Guerrilla came out in formation, waved a small white flag, and walked straight to the gate.

This soldier is also surnamed Wang, and he is a member of Wang Guerrilla's tribe.Before he came to the circle of barbed wire, a guard had already come out from the small gate of the compound. He untied a section of the barbed wire with his hands and put the envoy into the courtyard.

After Wang Qinbing walked into the compound, he didn't see anything that made his eyes shine.A large number of guards are behind the wall at this moment, behind them there is a circle of tables and chairs, with some firecrackers and gunpowder on it, that's all.

Soon, he saw Master Xiong on the steps.

"The villain pays respects to Mr. Xiong on behalf of my lord."

Xiong Dao saw the other party's obedient attitude, so he nodded: "Excuse me. Your king Guerrilla came here this time, what can you tell me?"

"It's good to teach Master Xiong to know: when we came here, my general said that we were entrusted by an old friend to bring troops here this time, so we had to do it as a last resort."

"If Mr. Xiong is willing to save face, my general is willing to be a middleman for a while, helping the gentlemen to make peace. In this way, all parties can make a fortune together without fighting. Wouldn't it be a good thing?" pile?"

"En." Xiong Dao nodded when he heard this, "I can recognize your general's kindness."

"However..." Xiong Dao dragged the end of his voice here: "This matter involves too much cause and effect. With the weight of your general, it cannot be weighed down. So there is no need to say too much, you go back Tell Wang Guerzilla, let me show you some of your skills first, good friends, you don’t know each other without fighting.”

……

When Wang's soldiers returned to the army, Wang Guerzilla couldn't help but sighed after listening to the narration, and then he raised his hand again: "It seems that you have to see blood to know how powerful it is!"

Following Wang Guerzilla's voice, two bronze tiger crouching cannons were slowly pushed out from behind the formation.

Tiger crouching guns have been widely used by the Ming army in Qi Jiguang's era.This kind of gun is not very powerful, similar to the mortars of later generations, it mainly uses curved shots.The range of the tiger squatting gun is not too far. Usually, under the condition of strong charge, it can reach a distance of 500 meters. Of course, the accuracy is not enough at this time.

However, in today's situation, the tiger squatting cannon is just able to show its power: Wang Guerrilla's purpose is to promote peace, so as long as the shells can penetrate into the opposite compound, it is enough for Mr. Xiong to understand the truth that war will kill people. .

So under the excited gaze of the whole army, the two tiger squat guns pushed to the front of the formation began a series of pre-launch preparations: pressing the gun mounts with stones, cleaning the barrels, and loading gunpowder...

But just as the gunner picked up an iron bullet from behind and was about to stuff it into the barrel, his head burst suddenly, and the iron bullet rolled to the ground.

Immediately afterwards, people heard the gunshot, and with good eyesight, they also saw the flashing flame of the gun muzzle: it was on the top of the second-floor building opposite.

But that's all.No matter how good the eyesight of the officers and soldiers was, they couldn't see Comrade Lu Cheng, who was wearing a red cassock and sitting on an officer's hat chair on the top of the opposite building, aiming at his opponent with a MK17 sniper rifle in a very flamboyant manner.

With a "hula", after seeing the gunner's brain-cracked corpse, all the people surrounding the tiger crouching gun dispersed.

And Wang Guerzilla, who was behind the artillery position, was also shocked.Sitting on the horse, he saw the flames of the gun on the opposite side and heard the sound of the gun, but now he couldn't figure out whether the gun was blind or was it really such a magical shot?

"Didn't you say that the fast gun can only take four or five hundred steps? It's already a mile!" Wang Guerzilla, who was furious, now wished he could beat Song Xiucai to death beside him with a whip.

However, apart from cursing a few words, he no longer cared about Song Xiucai: the artillery crew was fleeing in all directions, and some soldiers who were close to him were also slowly retreating with white faces. He needed to maintain his formation quickly to avoid chaos among the army .

He dispatched his personal guards to press down on all fours, and after slowly suppressing the position, the furious Wang Guerzilla jumped off his horse, and first whipped the flag of the artillery group severely: "It's just a blind cat meeting a dead mouse, what are you afraid of, let me go fire!"

So the trembling gun crew started the loading procedure again.

The next moment, Xiaoqi, holding the iron bullet, had his brain burst and died in front of Wang Guerzilla.Immediately afterwards, the urging gunshots sounded one after another, shooting and killing the people around the tiger squatting cannon.

The army then retreated two hundred steps.When everything stabilized again, the morale of the whole army was gone.We must know that we have retreated for a mile and a half now, and we can't even see the enemy on the opposite side, but we are facing the shooting of that weird musket at any time.

Wang Guerzilla knew that he was still overbearing, and it seemed that the old man's money was really hard to earn.

But Wang Deqiao had already guessed that everyone would have the accurate monster gun on the opposite side, otherwise if he fired a few more rounds of guns just now, he would have to go home.

The situation in front of Wang Deqiao now is: either send out a wave of troops to offset the impact of the strange gun, or just spend it like this, and finally leave in despair...

So Wang Dayouzhan gritted his teeth and chose the third path: cannon fodder flow.

He grabbed Song Xiucai by the collar and said in a harsh voice: "Go and tell the masters in the village behind, I want five hundred auxiliary soldiers for the battle. Also, bring more wooden boards, the iron wire is tied to the horse It needs to be broken with planks."

"I obey, I obey!" Song Xiucai, who was also frightened, nodded repeatedly at this moment: "I wonder when the general will want these auxiliary soldiers?"

"Today's morale has declined, and I can't fight. Go back and tell your master, don't be reluctant to give up money. I will charge tomorrow, whether it succeeds or fails, it depends on whether those auxiliary soldiers will sell their lives!"

Song Xiucai nodded repeatedly, got on his horse and galloped away.

Here, after Wang Deqiao arranged the strategy for tomorrow, he led his troops and confronted the opponent feebly for a long time.In the afternoon, the army ended hastily and moved into the empty commercial area.

At this time, sumptuous meals were also delivered from nearby Zhuangzi.In view of today's confrontation that made the officers and soldiers baffled, disheartened, and morale plummeted, Wang Guerzilla made timely adjustments: a silver reward was given to all the officers and soldiers, and some wine was rewarded to half of the officers and soldiers.

The generous rewards and money incentives restored the morale of the officers and soldiers a lot.Wang Guerzilla, who was relieved, urged his men to rest early after arranging the troops to guard against the enemy's night attack—tomorrow, he was going to be reckless, and he had to recharge his batteries.

The night passed in a hurry, and the time came to December 12th. Seven days have passed since December 13th when Ma Baihu was brutally murdered.

In the early morning, Wang Daguai, who was eating chicken in the main hall of the inn, was suddenly pulled out the door by the pale-faced guards.

"What's disturbing? Are those nurses coming here?"

"Black, black smoke!" The soldiers were already incoherent, unable to speak clearly, and just kept pointing their fingers in the direction of the sea.

The next moment, Wang Guerzilla opened his mouth wide, and the chicken leg fell from his hand.

What caught his eyes was a large ship emitting black smoke on the sea.One of the largest giant ships was covered with white sails on its mast, shining blue and gold in the morning light, while billowing black smoke, full of coercion.

"It's broken, Xiong called his godfather." Wang Deqiao murmured at this moment.

Chapter 411

Strictly speaking, the "Zhenman" iron-ribbed wood-hulled gunboat is a product of a great leap forward.

As early as the beginning of the year, the Navy began a series of verification work in order to build future main battleships.

A newest light-class gunship, the "Monitor", was first modified, and an 18-pound naval gun was installed on board to test the damage effect of heavy guns on Western-style warships.

For this reason, the navy also specially spent money to buy a second-hand armed merchant ship from the Dutch, and added a 20 cm thick oak wood hull to simulate the main Western warship in the age of sail.

The results of the first test were not satisfactory.

Facts have proved that even the 18-pound naval cannon produced by the advanced metallurgical technology of later generations is still a bit weak when facing a "sandwich hot dog", that is, a western-style main battleship with a double-layer thick oak hull sandwiching a dense ship rib. Powerless.

After all, the cutting force of the iron ball is the same, and the kinetic energy of the cannon is lost quickly after being fired.

The final test result is that within the Navy's ideal shelling distance of 2000 meters, the effective penetration rate of the shelling is not high, only 60%; until the distance between the two sides is shortened to 1000 meters, or even 800 meters, the 18-pound gun In order to effectively penetrate the opponent's hull.

This result is unacceptable to the Navy.

Because the Imperial Navy is currently taking the route of elite soldiers, in foreseeable future conflicts, a main battleship is likely to be besieged by a superior number of Western warships.In this situation, the importance of firepower is greatly enhanced: the battleship must quickly disable the enemy's combat effectiveness.

Although historically in East Asia, the colonists did not deploy first-class battleships like the "Sea King" and "Victory", but now that there is a huge variable crossing the crowd, no one can guarantee the future. historical trend.

Therefore, the navy must be lenient with the enemy, and take into account the highest possible combat effectiveness of the enemy from the very beginning.

In this way, the 18-pound gun plan was finally dropped by PASS, and the 24-pound gun made its debut.

After paying a huge price for the total weight, the weapon system of the new battleship finally satisfied the navy: within a distance of 2000 meters, the 24-pound naval cannon can penetrate any sailing ship on this plane.

After the most important weapon system was determined, the "Navy's 1629 Verified Capital Ship Plan" was officially implemented.

Because the wind direction at the beginning of the year was not good, the army was told to be patient, so the navy had no choice but to abandon the blueprints of multiple verification ships that were "running in small steps" and invested limited resources on this verification ship.

This caused the verification ship originally designed to be 800 tons to be lifted, and it started a great leap forward overnight, and was forcibly increased to 1200 tons.

This figure is still somewhat challenging for the navy, which has always operated combat ships of less than 500 tons.

The problem is not so much the driving, but the design.

Regarding sailing, the current navy is very familiar with the operation of sailboats and motor sailboats. In this regard, the navy has sufficient experience and manpower, and enlarged motor sailboats are not a problem.

The real challenge is design.

If the original 800-ton plan is carried out, then the shipyard's time-travelers are still confident that they will have a light-level lift, follow the gourd's drawing, and get the new ship by themselves.

But after enlarging the new ship to 1200 tons overnight and changing the artillery to 24 pounds, those in the shipyard shrank their eggs.We must know that once any machine is enlarged to a certain extent, various problems will inevitably arise, which cannot be handled by a few non-professional designers.

In the end, according to the old method, the navy handed over the parameter requirements of the new ship to Emperor Cao, and then the emperor went back to the later generations to find a design company, first design, and then use a large computer to simulate sea conditions to find problems, and finally draw a picture.

So what the Navy ended up with was a hard drive.

After starting the construction according to the drawings in the hard drive, the navy waited for more than eight months before the verification ship, which was planned to be named "Zhenman", could start sea trials.

And at this point in time, General Cao returned from Guangdong and was about to prepare for King Qin's affairs, so the sea trial plan of the Zhenman was very tight, and finally narrowly missed the mission to Shanghai.

As the core force to maintain the empire's hegemony for a period of time to come, the Zhenman received a brief naming ceremony before its first official voyage.The Emperor Cao Chuan visited the Zhenman at that time and gave a passionate speech at the bow of the ship.

And the Zhenman did not disappoint the travelers.Regardless of its majestic appearance or powerful combat effectiveness, this warship meets the public's "social expectations" and has become a new generation of powerful weapons for the country.

……

Since the [-]th century did not need to consider low visibility, stealth and anti-radar issues, so whether it was a land officer or a sea warship in this era, the appearance was extremely ostentatious, so that they could be seen by their own people on the chaotic battlefield.

The Zhenman is also unavoidable: the blue and gold hull painting, coupled with the white three-masted sails, not only makes the whole ship look amazing, but also highly recognizable. Can forget such a slender and beautiful battleship.

Speaking of slenderness, the designs from later generations naturally wouldn't design the battleships of Chuanzhong into the stubby shape with low aspect ratio in the seventeenth century.

In fact, including small frigates, warships across the public have always taken the path of large aspect ratio-excellent design and advanced hull structure ensure that the roll of the hull is controlled within the allowable range.

The standard displacement of the entire Zhenman is 1200 tons, and the full-load displacement is 1680 tons.This data has surpassed the British battleship King of the Seas in the same period.

Although the Sovereign weighs 1683 tons, it looks a little heavier than the Zhenman, but due to its own weight, the effective volume of the Sovereign is actually much worse than that of the Zhenman.

You must know that the load-bearing capacity and yield of wood are far inferior to steel. A seemingly "thin-skinned" steel warship is much higher than a seemingly thick wooden ship in terms of firmness and cargo volume.

For sailing battleships like the Sovereign, the total thickness of the double hull is usually around 40-46 cm.This data, together with the ship's ribs, actually exceeds half a meter in thickness.

Such a thick wooden shell, coupled with the fact that all other parts of the hull are made of wood, makes the warship's self-weight far exceed that of a steel warship of the same size.

As for the sail warship like the Zhenman, because the internal structure uses a lot of steel, it is not only stronger, but also has a much higher effective volume.

Another difference between the Zhenman and the sailing battleship is that this ship has two gun decks.

Generally speaking, large sailing battleships have three gun decks.

In order to lower the center of gravity, the guns with the largest caliber will be arranged on the lower gun deck, and the light guns will be arranged on the upper layer.This situation has led to a common problem of sailing warships: when the waves are high, the lower deck cannot open the gun port, otherwise sea water will flow back into the gun port.

However, the Zhenman, adhering to the usual "all-heavy artillery concept", therefore abandoned all light artillery, and the entire ship was equipped with only 40 24-pound long-barreled heavy artillery.

In this way, with the addition of coal and engines in the bilge, which maintain the center of gravity by the way, the Zhenman only has two gun decks, and the problem of seawater backflow does not exist.

In terms of firepower, 40 guns seem to be a small number, which is much less than the exaggerated 104 guns of the Sovereign, but the combat efficiency is much higher than the latter.

First of all, since the task of close-range shooting (if any) is handed over to muskets, wing ships and heavy machine guns that are not easily used, the number of 24-pound heavy guns on the Zhenman actually exceeds that of the sailing warship.

It is now the 17th century, and the western naval artillery of more than 24 pounds is still a short-barreled mortar with a very short range, which cannot threaten the Zhenman with a range of 2000 meters.

Secondly, with the assistance of advanced metallurgical technology and mechanical loading equipment, these 40 long-barreled heavy guns can fire accurately for a long time, and the damage effect is not comparable to that of the original artillery.

There is another point: the 40 guns on the Zhenman can fire at the same time from the left and right sides.

For traditional sailing warships, the gun positions should be divided by two—half on the left and right sides.This situation can play a role in the great melee at sea: bow left and right, anyway, there are enemies on all sides.

However, most of the time the gunboat still only uses one porthole to shoot.If it is necessary to bombard land targets for a long time, sailing warships sometimes even have to turn in circles in order to call the artillery on the other side to ensure shooting safety and prevent bombing.

In this way, the 100 guns on the Sovereign actually only have 50 on a single side. If you count all kinds of light guns, the total weight of the shells fired each salvo is far lower than that of the Zhenman.

Due to the advanced slide rail system of the Zhenman, and the increased cabin space brought about by the advanced structure and advanced materials, the 40 cannons can be easily moved back and forth on the left and right sides, and it takes less than a minute. .

In short, the advantages brought by technology are all aspects.In terms of ship type, weapons, protection, and power, the Zhenman far exceeds the Galen ship of the seventeenth century, and in some respects even surpasses the machine sail gunship in the late Qing Dynasty—except for the need to "import" some power components , the beautiful Zhenman is indeed a perfect "ideal warship".

……

This time, the Northward Fleet, with Zhenman as its flagship, departed for Shanghai Port on December 12th, the same day that Jin Yiwei Ma Baihu died.

Prior to this, the "Qinwang Transport Fleet" consisting of 10 new lock ships had already set off ahead of schedule 5 days ago.