Chapter 1194 A New Era of Air Combat (Second Update, Please Subscribe)
Three days!
For three days, the small Suihua Fort became a roadblock, blocking the Roman legions from advancing to Ningyuan.
In the past three days, relying on fortifications and fortresses, the Heavenly Kingdom Army guarding Suihua Fort has successively repelled the Russian army's three-day tide-like attacks, killing and wounding no less than 4,000 enemy troops, and also suffering more than half of their own casualties in the fierce fighting.
But the Russian offensive did not stop.
On February 17, the Russian army concentrated 74 cannons to the west of Suihua Fort, including 18 heavy artillery pieces of more than 100 mm, and equipped with hundreds of mortars. They bombarded, bombarded, and bombarded again without sparing any effort. Those shells loaded with picric acid explosives swept across Suihua Fort like a storm. At this time, the defenders had already retreated and abandoned the outer positions of the fort. The defenders, who had lost more than half of their troops, could only rely on the fort to resist the enemy's attack.
Three airships were in the air, which could indicate the impact points to the artillery positions at any time by telephone, making the Russian artillery fire more and more accurate. The gun positions, machine gun firing points, and bunkers in the fortress were accurately covered by the Russian artillery shells, and the earth and rocks flew everywhere, blood and flesh flew everywhere, and the ground shook wherever the artillery fire passed...
When Meng Guoren was dug out of the collapsed bunker by his subordinates, his face was covered in blood, but he was not seriously injured.
"Reinforcements...haven't the reinforcements arrived yet?"
When he learned that the reinforcements had not arrived yet, Meng Guoren just spoke silently.
"Well, it's time to serve our country!"
They held out for three days under the fierce attack of tens of thousands of enemy troops!
You have already served your country loyally!
Now the ammunition has been almost used up, more than half of the brothers have been killed, and those who survived are all injured.
But they will definitely fight to the last bullet and soldier. Surrender is impossible, they know what will happen after surrendering, because their fathers and brothers surrendered before, but they didn't survive.
Just then, someone pointed to the sky and said.
"Airship, it looks like our airship, our airship is coming."
airship!
The airship is coming.
There are three small airships in total.
"Well, our reinforcements should not be far away. God bless you."
Meng Guoren smiled and even recited a prayer devoutly while receiving the bandage.
He was rescued from the dead by the Heavenly Kingdom Army. The Buddha and Bodhisattva failed to save him and millions of Gansu compatriots, but the Heavenly Kingdom Army led by King Yi saved him, so he became a devout believer of the God Worshipping Society. In fact, it is not important what you believe in, what is important is what is in your bones.
Just like whether they are people from the Ming Dynasty or the Kingdom of Heaven, they are all Chinese at heart.
In fact, the three airships that came were all combat airships. The flight team was led by Lieutenant Li Zhigui, a member of the advisory group. He drove the airship here to investigate the situation in Suihua Fort.
At this time, the shelling was still going on. Suihua Fort was completely covered in smoke and there were rumbling sounds of artillery fire on the ground. Li Zhigui looked at the situation on the ground from the air, looked at the devastated Suihua Fort, and then said.
"It's really not easy for them. They actually held on for three days!"
"Airship, Chinese airship!"
Nikolai Pavlovich Ignatiev looked at the airship in the sky, and his extremely ugly face became even uglier. Once upon a time, he thought that these Chinese were as vulnerable as those Central Asian barbarians. Just like the Qing army, under the attack of the British and French forces, they even burned down their palaces.
But what about now?
Not only did they hold the fortress tenaciously, but they also inflicted heavy casualties on his army.
Three days!
His original plan was to capture the city of Kokand in three days, but who would have thought that he would be blocked in this hellhole.
"It looks like a combat airship, General! They are coming..."
It's a combat airship!
The crew on the Russian airship immediately became nervous after discovering the airship. Compared with the clumsy large airships, combat airships are specially designed for combat. They are assassins in the air.
"Damn, where did they get the combat airship from? Why didn't we have any intelligence about it before? Don't they only have two old-fashioned airships?"
They certainly did not get the intelligence that these three combat airships had just arrived in Ningyuan yesterday. They were the first batch of aid supplies provided by the empire. Even the airship crew were active-duty soldiers of the empire.
"Quick, take back the phone line!"
When the Russian airships were thrown into chaos by the appearance of the combat airships, three small combat airships had already attacked at high speed. They were very fast and their movements were very agile. While the three Russian airships were still awkwardly adjusting their flight posture, they had already flown over.
"Oh my God, they're done!"
When the Russians on the ground saw this scene, they all made the sign of the cross in sorrow.
In fact, the Russians were also very good at using airships. After all, when attacking Turkey, the Russians used airships to drop heavy bombs to destroy Turkish fortresses more than once.
But that was in Europe.
In Central Asia... they only have a few old-fashioned airships. After all, the nearest railway is in Orenburg, thousands of kilometers away, so their use of airships is almost the same as that of balloons, that is, carrying artillery observers and connecting to the ground through wired telephones to correct their own artillery fire or conduct reconnaissance at any time. As early as the Turkish War, Russia had widely used this effective technology.
If they were fighting against the barbarians in Central Asia, these old-fashioned airships used as balloons would certainly not be in any danger, but they could never have dreamed that the Ming Empire would roll up its sleeves and take the field.
“Shoot, shoot…”
Seeing the combat airship approaching, the Russian soldiers on the airship immediately set up a 15mm airship machine gun and fired at the approaching aircraft. The specially made tracer incendiary bullets flew through the air with red tracer trajectories. The airship machine gun had a large caliber, but a low initial velocity and a curved trajectory, which quickly turned into a series of pee-like trajectories in the air.
"Just like a kid peeing!"
Li Zhigui sneered.
The airship machine gun was a new weapon developed by Westerners after the Battle of Brazil, based on the experience of the Empire and based on flares. It can be called the nemesis of airships, and it explodes with one hit. However, the reassuring thing is that its trajectory is very curved and its range is very short, only two or three hundred meters. What's more, due to the installation position, its shooting angle is also very limited.
After climbing to an altitude of 1,000 meters, Li Zhigui's airship successfully avoided the firepower of the Russian airship. Then he found the right angle and began to dive towards the Russian airship.
As the airship dived, Li Zhigui aimed at the airship and stepped directly on the firing pedal. The moment the gunshot rang out, the two Type 10 machine guns in front of the boat immediately fired a string of bullets. The tracer bullets dragged a red trajectory and whizzed towards the target at a distance of thousands of meters. In just a moment, hundreds of bullets were fired.
The moment the bullet hit the airship, the tracer bullet detonated the hydrogen in the airship. In just a blink of an eye, the airship turned into a blazing torch and fell towards the ground.
When the airship turned into a torch and fell from the sky, the poor Russians on the airship jumped out desperately. However, as soon as the parachutes of some of them were opened, they were ignited by the burning airship and fell directly with the burning parachutes...
(End of this chapter)
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