Chapter 561: The Bombardment
Chapter 549: Bombardment
“Boom, boom, boom ……”
Shell after shell fell from the sky, causing chaos within the city of Ava. Cries and screams resounded all over the city as the frightened populace scurried through the streets.
Akjol couldn’t care less about the job at hand, pulling his apprentice and running for the backyard. Suddenly stopping at a pile of debris, Arkjörn said, “Quickly help, let’s hide in the cellar.”
Knowing the seriousness, the teenager nodded and followed along. The original purpose of this hidden cellar was for the blacksmith store owner to hide from the tax collector.
How could one not evade taxes when doing business in the Ottoman Empire? Even though it was just a small blacksmith store, at its peak the owner processed people that there were as many as a dozen people.
Just build agricultural tools, pots and pans, these small objects can earn a few dollars? Not to mention the officials to scrape a layer of oil and water, fell into the hands of the boss are not many, how can afford to feed so many people?
Flexible blacksmith store boss, naturally, will not sit idly by, decisively opened up a new business – to build weapons, and still the kind of weapons that can not be seen in the light of day.
With the passage of time, the advent of the era of hot weapons, private work is more and more bad to take. Mountain bandits, bandits, pirates, this group of high-quality customers less and less door to door, the blacksmith store also slowly declined.
By the time the current generation of bosses, another grocery store was opened and expanded, and the blacksmith store as an ancestral property was still preserved. Only Akjol a master in, usually build some daily necessities to sell, but also to maintain.
After the war broke out, the boss who sensed the danger took his family and ran away, leaving Akjol and a small apprentice to stay and watch the store.
Underground business is gone, the cellar is also followed by deserted, in addition to the occasional storage of some supplies, the usual period are not used.
It now became a hiding place for the two men, whose breathing was clearly visible in the small space. The teenager asked with some composure, “Master ……”
Akjol interrupted, “Stop, I know what you want to ask. But right now we can’t do anything but hide here.
When they hear the sound of the cannons, they will definitely hide. Even if you go out now, you won’t be able to help. Cannonballs don’t have eyes, we can’t stop them at all, I believe **** will bless them ……”
Encountering the ship’s artillery attack, Ava’s garrison officer Özgül immediately ordered, “Immediately organize return fire for me, we can’t let the enemy continue to act so recklessly.”
This war, the Ottoman Empire also prepared for half a year, from Britain and France to buy a lot of artillery, as a key defense port, distributed in Ava shore guns are hundreds of doors.
Of course, this can really play a role in the number of heavy artillery, only more than thirty. Other artillery, to the ironclad has been little threat.
This is not a small number, the Ottoman port city so many, Ava can share so many artillery, attention can be seen extraordinary.
Under normal circumstances, no one will take warships and shore guns against the bombardment, this is a very stupid choice. Coastal artillery target is small, on land can be stabilized focus, bombardment in the loss is certainly warships.
Of course, there are exceptions. Weapons and equipment, the quality of soldiers, is also a key factor affecting the hit rate. It is not surprising to lose to warships in the counter bombardment, only that these are very few.
“Yes, General!”
As soon as the voice fell, several young officers quickly stepped forward and picked up the phones in the command room and called out. These phones, without exception, did not have such lofty equipment as dialing dials, and relied entirely on manual wiring calls.
If someone carefully look at the German language description on the base of the phone, will find these products, but also note the origin of Austria.
This is a small problem, now technology is limited, and it is impossible to be remotely monitored, no matter who produced these phones, but also can not leave the back door.
Battlefield or practical is the most important, the international market, most of the telephone equipment, are Austrian exports, the Sudanese government does not have the qualifications to pick.
Don’t look at these equipment is simple, in fact, in the production of “a tiny bit, will be a thousand miles”. With the industrial technology of the Ottoman Empire, the communication equipment produced is simply not usable.
As the orders were passed out, the long awaited shore cannons started to fire, and the deafening sound of cannons kept ringing out.
About two or three nautical miles away on a warship, a stout middle-aged officer was standing on the plywood, holding a telescope and looking into the distance. (1 nautical mile = 1.852 kilometers)
The guard dutifully reminded, “General, it’s dangerous here, you’d better go to the overlook room!”
The middle-aged man laughed, “If the enemy is able to hit at this distance, then it’s God trying to summon me early.”
Hit? Most artillery simply couldn’t shoot this far, and the handful of artillery models that had this range couldn’t aim at this distance either.
The Austrian Navy attacked Ava in a complete mess, there was no need to aim at all, just adjusting to the maximum range and letting the shells fly as far as possible was enough.
If you want to achieve results, unless you bring the distance closer again. Currently the closest warships to Ava, also maintain a distance of two nautical miles.
This distance was just right to ensure that the ship’s cannons could send shells into the city, and also ensure the safety of the warships.
Looking at the watch on his hand, the middle-aged officer muttered to himself, “It’s about time for them to come, if they don’t come I’ll have to do it myself.”
This was not the first time that a port city had been shelled, since April 5th when the shelling of the Ottoman ports kicked off, the Austrian Navy had conducted live-fire training on several port cities every day.
That’s right, live-fire training. The navy as a whole treated this as a training exercise, using the Ottomans as targets to train the gunners to hit.
Without waiting long, a colorful cloud floated in the sky, and the middle-aged officer frowned, “Order the fleet to bring the distance closer by 1 nautical mile, and pay attention to the wind direction.”
In order to create an opportunity for the air force, this time they had to act as bait. If they didn’t create enough pressure, how could they force out all the enemy’s shore artillery fire?
Sure enough, as the Austrian navy approached, the sound of artillery fire became intense, and in order to make a good fight, Özgür couldn’t be bothered to hide, and all the firepower of the defenders opened up.
Behind the two inconspicuous shore guns, the young officer, Lieutenant Colonel Saltus, yelled excitedly, “Give me the aim to hit, caught hitting the warships to hit, those little nubs, can you hit it!”
Lieutenant Colonel Saltus was not an ordinary noble officer waiting for death, as a rising star in the Ottoman army, he was an international student at the French military school of St. Cyr.
If it wasn’t for the sudden outbreak of war, he would have had to continue studying hard in France for two more years before he could complete his studies. There was no other way, at the moment of life and death the Sultan’s government decided to fight to the death, no matter whether they graduated or not, they were recalled early to join the war.
In any case, after a few years of study outside, contact with the world’s most advanced military concepts, theoretical knowledge is much stronger than the domestic turkey aristocratic officers.
Under normal circumstances, a high achiever like Saltus should have gone to the headquarters to be trained, or even worse, to a division level command. Unfortunately, having just been assigned to Ava, Saltus was offended.
Right after arriving, he sprayed Ava’s shore gun deployment as useless and proposed changes to the program.
In the face of war, old disabled villains are only a minority, and with his vast theoretical knowledge, Saltus managed to convince the crowd and was promoted to lieutenant colonel for his merits.
Offended, Saltus was soon sent to the first-line troops to exercise. Practically guarding the shore guns, if the war had not started, it is estimated that the rest of his life would have ended like this.
A soldier exclaimed, “Lieutenant Colonel, which big bird in the sky is here again.”
Unhappy with the soldier’s yelling, Lt. Col. Saltus corrected, “That’s a blimp, not some big bird.”
The soldier hastily remedied the situation, “Yes, the blimp. Hey, something fell down here, could it be that they are throwing waste paper again?”
To the illiterate Big Head Soldier, there wasn’t much difference between the leaflets thrown from Austria and waste paper. The use of leaflets to cause panic and induce the local population to run away was not carried out successfully.
The knowledgeable Saltus had already reacted, how did it take so many airships to throw out leaflets? One was enough, there was absolutely no need to deploy more than twenty at a time.
“No good it’s a bomb, take cover!”
After saying that, Saltus scattered. It wasn’t his fault that he panicked, no one had experienced this wave before, to be able to judge a bomb in the first place was a high level of knowledge on his part.
How to dodge the bombing, it’s not written in the books, right? Knowing to run away is enough to prove that his reaction is flexible. If the enemy wants to bombard, it must be aimed at the artillery, and the safety of staying away from the battery is naturally increased.
However, all this is too late, before running out a few steps, a bomb fell from the sky, the battery was taken care of.
After the roaring explosions, all that was left was a mess. The fleeing Saltus was toppled to the ground by a wave of air, with two pieces of shrapnel lodged in his arm.
Strongly enduring the pain, he raised his head to look at the few soldiers left in place, no longer able to see the human form, leaving only a crater on the ground and the blurred …… (several words omitted)
Saltus could no longer care about the cannon, forced himself to endure the pain and climbed up to continue to run, all he wanted now was to get away from the battery.
With the bombardment falling from the sky, many people were in a state of confusion. It was more than they could take in and they had absolutely no idea how to react.
The design of the fort was only to deal with the enemies at sea, but no one thought of also defending against the enemies in the sky.
Anti-aircraft firepower was non-existent, the first large-scale bombardment in the history of mankind, who would be able to predict it?
No matter how chaotic the ground was, the bombs in the sky still kept pouring into the ground, and as long as a suspicious target was found, the bombs were directly thrown over.
Inside the command headquarters of the Ava garrison, Major General Özgür was like an ant on a hot pan, stomping his feet anxiously, completely at a loss as to what to do.
……
(End of chapter)