The Rise of the Empire

If the efforts of the French have, to a certain extent, found the advantage of the German Army in armored forces, then the British have made up for the Allied Army's shortcomings in heavy artillery! The reason why the British did such a thing was, on the one hand, because of their battlefield experience, and on the other hand, because of waste utilization...

The current British Legion can be said to be the legion with the most actual combat experience before the start of the war. Some people may counter that the scale of the battle between Japan and Russia in the Russo-Japanese War was larger. But the British fought in South Africa for four full years. They had not fought positional warfare, mobile warfare, offensive warfare, and defensive warfare.

If you want to compare the combat effectiveness of troops of the same size, the Boers, who have been trained by the Bavarians for several years and all use German equipment, are obviously much stronger than the Russian and Japanese troops of the same size. Not to mention, one man and two horses. The 150MM heavy artillery at the division level is enough to make the Japanese and Russian armies jealous!

In the vast area of ​​millions of square kilometers in southern Africa, fighting such a highly mobile and well-equipped force would be a challenge for the British. Although the overall size of the British army is large, every time it reaches a local battlefield, the British army's strength and equipment are at a disadvantage. After being beaten too many times, the British will learn lessons from their experience and pay hundreds of millions of pounds and tens of thousands of lives. The British actually established a world-leading mobile artillery force!

In order to completely suppress the Boer artillery, and to make up for the shortcomings of the army's artillery, the British decisively removed more and more naval guns from the battleships, then mounted them on an army gun mount, and followed the infantry units to fight guerrillas everywhere. , these are all naval guns. In terms of performance, any 4.7-inch secondary gun used by a third-class cruiser can crush the 150MM heavy howitzer used by the Boers in terms of range.

Later, when attacking some fortresses and strongholds, the British even removed the 7.5-inch naval guns from the first-class cruisers and then used tractors or trains to transport them. When used as a siege gun, think about it. The barrel of a 7.5-inch L45 gun alone weighs 14 tons! An elevation angle of 15 degrees can achieve a range of 13 kilometers. This level of artillery has exceeded the scope of military-level artillery, and can even be used as a train gun!

After more than a year of war training, the British have finally filled up their scientific and technological books on naval gun-to-army transformation! After the Boer War, the guns that were removed from the battleships and then truncated were not returned to the Navy or scrapped, but were directly stored in the Army's arsenal for use in the next war.

Don't underestimate the potential of any great power. The British are top-notch in terms of cars and artillery. Relying on their strong national power, they even developed a model that allows the 7.5-inch cannon to maneuver quickly without using a train! Of course, there is still some gap between this kind of artillery and the famous GPF194MM self-propelled cannon in France during World War I, but at this time, it was quite powerful.

The method adopted by the British is this. The entire 7.5-inch artillery fleet consists of 4 heavy-duty tractors and 8 trucks. First, the 7.5-inch L40 artillery is placed on a trailer. Secondly, the artillery mount was fixed on a flatbed tractor. This tractor has been specially modified. There are jacks around the body so that the hoe can be lowered. One of the three other two tractors is equipped with a crane and engineering equipment for the installation of the artillery, while the last tractor is responsible for transporting large accessories. As for the remaining eight trucks, they are responsible for transporting various supplies such as artillery shells, personnel, and fuel.

Although this artillery is not self-propelled and although it takes 2 hours from entering the position to being deployed,

However, relying on the artillery shells weighing more than 90 kilograms and the maximum range of more than 24 kilometers at 45 degrees, this artillery still became the most NB mobile artillery of the Allied Powers on the Western Front in the early days of World War I! What's even more awesome about the British is that they considered that this artillery will be deployed on the Western Front, and the most important thing for artillery mobility is vehicles. They even purchased a batch of French vehicles as accessories for this artillery, so as to solve the problem. solved a lot of logistical problems.

Because of such a series of efforts, the British deployed 36 such artillery pieces in France in the first large-scale border battle between the two sides after the war. And posed a great threat to the attacking German army.

As for the 6-inch and 4.7-inch artillery that are much smaller than the 7.5-inch artillery, there are even more amazing ones. Some British Expeditionary Forces even used the land version of the 6-inch naval gun as a military-level artillery, and the 4.7-inch rapid-fire cannon is even more necessary. was demoted to the division one level!

As for smaller artillery? For example, there are more 12-pound guns and 15-pound guns. Although these are a bit bulky, the artillery with a long enough range is much easier to use than the 77MM rapid-fire guns and 105MM light howitzers equipped by the Prussian Army, so that in At the beginning of the war, when the number of British regiments was not large, their firepower caused a lot of trouble to the Germans.

However, the only thing that pleased Ruprecht was that the air forces of Britain and France had not developed much. This does not mean that Germany's secrecy of the air force was really watertight. It's because, whether it is armored vehicles or long-range mobile artillery, these things have been tested in actual combat to some extent.

Whether it was the rampaging Russian armored vehicles in the Russo-Japanese War or the heavy artillery that slaughtered cities and destroyed countries in the Boer War, their effects were visible and tangible, but what about airplanes? Well, it can also be called a flying bookshelf. Who knows what the effect is? Is there any actual combat test? And the biggest difference between aircraft and artillery armored vehicles is that it is a new technology. Unlike artillery and armor, which can produce good products through simple integration, the direction is wrong and there is no strict scientific theoretical guidance. I really think that aircraft are based on engines. Just something?

Therefore, the attitude of Britain and France towards the air force is mainly reconnaissance. The design concept of aircraft is actually not much higher than in history. However, after receiving relevant intelligence, Ruprecht believed that even so, the possibility of Germany directly beating the Allies to death on the Western Front has dropped to less than 20%. The only difference is to see how stable the front can be. .

"I hope that Little Maoqi can pay attention to this information and make the attack more stable." Ruprecht thought for a while and decided to write another letter to Little Maoqi, asking him to pay attention to the changes in the British and French armies. As for the changes in the British and French armies, Will the changes affect Russians? Ruprecht didn't mind, because he knew that the Russians didn't have this ability!

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