The Rise of the Empire

"You Boers have so many horses and large livestock, why don't you bring more artillery?" After wandering around the Boer Republic, Caliput suddenly became messy. The richness of the Boers exceeded his expectations, and the large number of horses exceeded previous guesses. Caliput began to think that the Boers didn't like heavy equipment. Apart from the guerrilla style, the other point was the lack of large livestock, but now it looks completely different! One word is lazy!

Do the Boers lack livestock? There may be a lack of regular cavalry to use horses, but there is definitely no shortage of ordinary draft horses or livestock such as cattle. After all, most of the more than 200,000 people in the family are high-agricultural, and a considerable number of people have farms, and black helpers are also employed on the farms. When the Boer War came to the end of 1901, the Boers were at the end of their ropes, but even so, they could still gather 5,000 cavalry, and ran thousands of miles, directly killing them near Cape Town!

People with a little common sense in later generations can measure the distance from the Eastern Cape to Cape Town on the Baidu map and know that this distance is definitely not close! 5000 cavalry! Doesn't mean there are only 5,000 horses! In order to support this cavalry, quite a lot of logistics is needed, among other things, just for the daily feed, each horse needs 5KG of concentrated feed! The transportation capacity required for this logistics must be a large amount, and at this time the Boers can still gather such a huge mobile corps, let's think about how rich this family is!

If the limited railway transportation capacity is excluded, even if the Boer army is equipped with a large number of heavy equipment, it can still guarantee higher mobility than the British. The horses of the British need to be transported from other places. As the largest organized farmer in the area, the Boers pull their horses from their own farms! Can it be the same difficulty?

"All the old-style medium-caliber artillery and small-caliber artillery should be swept into the garbage dump of history. In order to ensure the convenience of logistics supplies, and to make your country's army have sufficient attacking capabilities, what your country needs is these things!" Cary Put pointed to a short-bodied, very stocky heavy cannon in the distance and said.

"The SFH95 150MM heavy howitzer that Bavaria solemnly withdrew has a barrel length of 15L. The effective range reaches 7200 meters. The shell weighs 42KG, and the muzzle velocity is 450 meters per second. The weight of the fired gun is 2500KG." Listening to Caliput's words Introduction, Kruger felt his eyelids kept twitching. He never understood. Why do I have to equip a gun that is 1 ton heavier than the 75MM rapid-fire gun and has a slightly shorter range.

"What? You ask me why I recommend this artillery? The reason is very simple! The firepower is fierce!" Caliput pointed to a forest not far away. Then signal to the German gunner next to him. A German artillery squad immediately aimed and loaded according to the calculated distance, and with a loud noise, the huge artillery barrel shrank back suddenly. A huge fireball flew towards a distant target. After a violent explosion, the shrubs and trees within a diameter of more than 30 meters were smashed into pieces by the powerful grenade!

"Is this reason enough?" Caliput smiled and said to the stunned Kruger next to him. There is only one reason why Caliput asked the Boers to equip this kind of heavy firepower, and that is power! At least from the current point of view, there should be no fortifications or bunkers that can withstand the power of such artillery in South Africa. The shell weight of the 75MM gun is just over 7KG. This shell is 42KG, which is almost 6 times that of the former one! Although artillery like Miss 75 may have an advantage in range, considering the tactics used by ordinary people at this time, these artillery are more used for direct aiming and shooting, and for direct aiming and shooting, the actual combat distances of both sides are similar.

As a result, one side is a 150MM heavy artillery and the other is a 75MM artillery. It is really clear who wins and who loses in a fight!

Of course, such heavy artillery should also exist, and it is even better. In history, the British had a record of dismantling 4.7-inch or even 6-inch naval guns and putting a gun mount as a land gun. When encountering such a hard stubble, this kind of army howitzer will directly kneel in terms of range and power. Yes, but at least before the arrival of the British heavy artillery, the Boer regular army equipped with a certain number of 150MM artillery has a quality advantage. Of course, the mobility of the troops will definitely decrease.

Originally, according to Caliput's idea, he planned to build a special siege mortar unit for the Boers, equipped with the 210MM heavy mortar that had just been eliminated from the Bavarian army. I am going to contribute to Bavaria's military refit, but think about this kind of muzzle velocity is only more than 100 meters per second. The artillery weighing more than 2 tons and with a range of less than 2,000 meters is said to be too specialized in function, and it is too cheating to say the least, and it has too much impact on one's reputation. At the same time, 80% of the Boers who were also considered would not admit it, so they gave up.

In order to ensure the frontal firepower, Caliput concentrated his efforts to strengthen the firepower configuration of the Transvaal army. All the barrel artillery uses two calibers, one is a 75MM rapid-fire gun, and the other is a 150MM heavy howitzer. . From the point of view of military strength. The number of troops that could be concentrated in the Transvaal was about 43,000. Although considering the composition of the troops, a big discount has to be made, but it is not a big problem to gather an elite division.

According to the establishment of the German division in the future, a division must have 72 guns of various barrels, and a total of 12 companies with 6 guns, most of which are 105MM light howitzers, and the rest are a small number of 75MM guns and 18 150MM heavy howitzers . A discount for the Boers' troops. This elite division has a strength of about 20,000 troops and is the most powerful field force in the Transvaal Republic. The number of artillery owned remains 72! However, except for the 12 150MM heavy howitzers, the remaining 60 artillery pieces are all 75MM rapid-fire guns.

In addition to regular howitzers and rapid-fire guns, the mortars that the Boers like are naturally indispensable. After strengthening from the company level, you can get 82MM mortars, even under normal circumstances, there are company-level 60MM guns. At the regiment level, there are 120MM mortars. Coupled with machine guns, the Boers possessed no less firepower than the German army at the same time in regimental-scale battles.

This firepower may be far inferior to that of the regular German army divisions in World War I, but compared with the division-level units of other powers in this era, it is very NB. The elite troops supported by Transway's financial income of nearly 4 million pounds a year are really different.

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