Munitions Empire

Chapter 566: 525 Tang Army charges the battle formation

Chapter 566: 525 Tang Army charges the battle formation

Liu Guozhu felt like a mackerel hiding in a can, with a giant outside trying to pry open the protective tin, yearning to swallow him whole.

The gunfire and barrage outside were so intense they made people’s scalps tingle, with bullets coming from everywhere and explosions resounding all around.

However, the No. 4 tank he was driving remained incredibly sturdy, its thick armor blocking attacks from all directions.

Bullets banged against the tank’s armor like raindrops hitting a roof, with one bullet striking the armor and ricocheting off, sparking a shower of sparks.

The sheer volume of incoming ammunition even wore away the paint on the tank, obliterating its original appearance and indicating bullet impacts so dense that some bullets hit exactly the same spots.

Seated in the commander’s position, Liu Guozhu thought that for infantry to charge in such an environment was sheer madness; even with armor protection, it required immense courage to break through such defenses.

Peering through the slender gap at the commander’s spot, Liu Guozhu saw a bunker ahead continuously spewing flames, with bullets shooting out incessantly from the small firing holes.

“One o’clock, one o’clock! Machine gun bunker! Do you see it? Do you see it?” Liu Guozhu shouted loudly to his gunner.

The gunner was operating the turret’s rotation and, upon hearing Liu Guozhu’s reminder, immediately started to align the turret’s scale in his field of vision.

He worked hard to align the turret scale to the direction of one o’clock and then observed the smoke-filled battlefield through the scale-laden sighting scope.

“I see it! I see it! Loader! High-explosive shell loading! High-explosive!” He had spotted the target, then yelled at his loader.

The loader responded swiftly, pulling out a shell marked with ‘high-explosive’ from the ammunition rack and pushed it into the cannon breach without hesitation.

The next second, the breech block closed automatically, and then the gunner heard the loader’s ready shout. Instinctively stepping on the firing pedal, the shell shot forth from the barrel.

Accompanied by a violent tremor, the shell flew out of the 75mm short-barreled cannon, heading straight toward the distant target, narrowly missing flying directly into the machine gun bunker’s firing hole.@@@@

Even so, the shell exploded right next to the firing hole, the enormous blast engulfing much of the bunker, instantaneously silencing the firing hole.

Qi Army soldiers hidden in the bunker were not intimidated by the Stuka bombers; they stood their ground, trying to halt the Tang Army’s advance.

But when the Qi Army awaited the Tang forces’ assault, they discovered that the advancing Tang Army was equipped with a weapon they had never seen before.

This weapon was fast, fitted with a rotatable turret, had two machine guns and a cannon, full of firepower and extremely strong in defense.

Driving this new weapon, the Tang Army quickly got close to the Qi Army’s front lines. These steel monsters tore through the barbed wire, then began rampaging through the forward positions of the Qi troops.

In the midst of the Qi Army’s gunfire and shelling, follow-up Tang infantry braved the barrage to fill the wide trenches obstructing the tanks’ path, with sandbag-carrying Tang soldiers being shot down one after another beside the trench.

On the bare position, Qi Army’s artillery shells soon fell, but there were not many of them, and their accuracy was terribly off.

Seven or eight shells fell behind the Tang Army tanks, while another two or three shells fell onto the Qi Army’s own positions, and those in full retreat were blown into bitter joy.

Just then, Liu Guozhu saw a Red Dragon Flag passing over his own tank—it was the Tang Army Infantry coming up to occupy the trenches and positions near the tank.

The battle continued, but the situation had become one-sided. The Qi Army, already disheartened by the Tang Country’s air assault, was now completely scattered by the impact of the tanks and had withdrawn from the first line of defense.

However, before they could recover, or rally on the second line of defense, Tang Army’s artillery once again rolled over them.

“Whoosh!” Howling shells landed on the Qi Army’s positions, causing the already terrified Qi soldiers who hadn’t caught their breath to once again break into a cry for their fathers and mothers as they fled in disarray.

“How can their artillery fire be so fast?” A Qi soldier who didn’t even care for his weapon beside him, started running, crying and complaining as he ran.

“Stop talking! Save your energy!” An experienced soldier ran along the trench without looking back, reminding the rookie beside him as he ran.

“Where is our artillery?” Another Qi soldier had in his mind already desecrated his own artillerymen’s ancestry.

He had barely finished speaking when he saw a 130mm howitzer lying inside a hidden position. Next to it was a smoking crater, and bodies scattered around that had not been dealt with in time.

This was the handiwork of the Stuka Dive Bomber, with a bomb accurately hitting this gun emplacement, advancing all the artillerymen inside, and the gun itself.

Staring wide-eyed, his pace slowly slowing down, this complaining Qi soldier foolishly looked at the artillery parts scattered beside the bodies and those incomplete corpses, and in an instant, he even forgot to run.

During his daze, a sound pulled him back to the harsh reality: that long, increasingly mournful sound from hell echoed over his head again.

“Buzz... woohoo... woo!” Accompanied by that distinct, terrifyingly sharp buzz, a Stuka Dive Bomber returning to the battlefield dropped bombs once again.

The sound utterly devastated the already retreating Qi Army, and they fell to their knees, raised their hands high, and cried out to the Tang Army for surrender: “Stop firing! We surrender! Please, we beg you! We surrender! Stop firing!”

Following that, they saw the tracks churning as the hefty Type 4 tanks drove past them, rolling over their trenches, rushing towards the distant beyond.

And the Tang Army soldiers following the tanks began to take over trenches and positions, escorting prisoners, and filling in some trenches and obstacles.

The noise gradually faded away; it was only at this point that the Qi Army realized the border defense line they had solemnly promised to hold for half a year seemed to have been almost breached by the Tang Army in just one morning!

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