1850 American Gold Tycoon.

Chapter 707 We wiped out 45 acres of Yankee soldiers!

Outside the Western Army's command post in the eastern suburbs, Liang Yao was accompanying Napoleon III's French delegation to fiddle with the Thunder machine gun.

Napoleon III and his generals were having a great time. The sound of the Thunder machine gun was heard incessantly, and copper bullet casings were scattered all over the ground next to the machine gun.

Washington, the commander of the machine gun regiment, walked over with a dull look in his eyes, stepping on yellow bullet casings. The smoke from the Omaha battlefield left mottled marks on his brand new gray-green uniform. The smell of mechanical lubricating oil mixed with the smell of blood and the murderous aura from Washington hit him in the face.

"In this battle, the machine gun unit only had 11 deaths and 32 injuries. 23 Thunder machine guns were directly scrapped, and another 44 had mechanical failures. Mechanics are repairing them. The ammunition consumption reached an astonishing 132.7 million rounds." Washington reported the situation to Liang Yao expressionlessly. He was much calmer than before the war.

"The failure rate is still too high. Let the shooters write a detailed report and submit it to the Volcanic Rock Company, instructing them to make improvements." Liang Yao said with a frown.

The total number of machine guns put into combat this time, including spare machine guns, was 342. These 342 machine guns were used for less than 40 minutes in total, and the failure rate was as high as nearly 20%.

Although Liang Yao is a wealthy man, he still finds it hard to accept such a high failure rate.

The cost of the Thunder machine gun is not much cheaper than the 6-pound Sacramento cannon. As for the ammunition, although the cost has been spread out after the production volume increased, the cost of each machine gun bullet has been compressed to 9 cents. However, considering the consumption of hundreds of thousands or even millions of rounds, the cost of ammunition is actually much higher than the machine gun itself.

Liang Yao did some calculations and found that the battle in the eastern suburbs of Omaha just now lasted less than 40 minutes, and the loss of machine guns and ammunition alone cost $15!

The sound of a cannon is worth a ton of gold, and now the sound of a machine gun is also worth a ton of gold.

"Normally the failure rate isn't this high. With your relentless shooting style, even the best steel drilled out of the barrel won't hold up," Connie argued hastily.

"Besides, the performance of the Thunder Machine Gun today is obvious to all."

The French delegation showed great interest in the Thunder machine gun, and Kony did not want to lose the French order due to the failure rate problem. Kony believes that the performance of the Thunder machine gun today has met expectations.

"How dare you say that? If we hadn't equipped each gun group with three machine guns today, would we have been able to achieve such performance?" Although Connie was Liang Yao's brother-in-law, Liang Yao did not show Connie much mercy.

Soon, Stanford, who was in charge of cleaning up the battlefield, also found Liang Yao: "The remaining Yankee soldiers have been driven back to Omaha by General Kruger, and the Yankee positions outside the city have already raised our White Star flag.

Too many Northern soldiers died, and many of their bodies were beaten into pieces. It would be difficult to count the number of Northern Army casualties in a short period of time, and the results would not be available until tomorrow at the earliest.

It was so tragic. I have never seen such a tragic battlefield in my life."

When Stanford was clearing out Mormons in Utah Territory, he killed many people and earned the notoriety of the Utah Butcher.

Even Stanford thought the Omaha battlefield was horrific, which shows that the cruelty of the Omaha battlefield was indeed far beyond imagination.

"Is there a rough number?" Liang Yao asked with his hands behind his back.

"If you must know a more accurate number, 45 acres. We killed about 45 acres of Yankee soldiers." Stanford pondered for a while and finally came up with an unheard-of unit of measurement.

Liang Yao didn't know the exact number of casualties of the Union Army in the Omaha Corps for the time being, but McClellan knew.

In this breakout in the eastern suburbs of Omaha, McClellan dispatched 34 fully-staffed infantry regiments and a cavalry regiment. There were 3.4 troops at the time of the attack, but in the end, only less than 7 troops were gathered.

In 40 minutes, 2.7 people were annihilated by the Western Army. If McClellan had not experienced it himself and seen it with his own eyes, he would never have believed it was true.

The 2.7 casualties were only in the main attack direction. In the earlier feint attack on the western suburbs battlefield, the Omaha Corps also suffered more than a thousand casualties.

In other words, at least 2.8 men from the Omaha Corps were killed by the Western Army's guns in one day.

In McClellan's imagination, the worst result was only to suffer nearly thousands of casualties and fail to break out. However, the reality was far more cruel than he imagined, and the Western Army was far stronger than he imagined.

Before this battle, McClellan believed that although the Western Army was strong, it was not as strong as the Southern Army.

With the 70,000-man Omaha Army and the victory in Northern Kansas, he could at least contain the Western Army, even if he didn't defeat it.

Now it seems that he was completely wrong. In fact, the Western Army with a better industrial base was a more difficult enemy than the Southern Army, which was known for its bravery and fighting ability!

"Break out! Break out! McClellan! What are you waiting for! Break out quickly under the cover of night! If you don't break out, the Yankee army will break in!"

McClellan, biting a pencil and feeling upset, was interrupted by the noise outside the door.

McClellan, who was usually very stable, couldn't help but lose his temper and cleared the table.

McClellan looked towards the door with a gloomy face, only to see the Eastern masters, led by Astor and Livingston, shouting and clamoring at the door of his command post.

If before the war these Eastern gentlemen still had the mentality of successfully breaking through and returning to show off to their colleagues in Congress as Washington's saviors, now Astor and Livingston just wanted to avoid being killed or captured by the Western Army and return to New York safely.

"Joseph! Send them down and calm them down!"

McClellan automatically called out the name of his deputy, Brigadier General Joseph Hooker.

"Sir, General Joseph has not returned to his unit and may have died for his country."

A colonel staff officer in the command post whispered a reminder to McClellan.

McClellan wiped the tears from his face and refused to indulge Astor and Livingston anymore. He walked straight towards Astor and Livingston and crushed the pencil he had spit on the ground with his military boots.

Walking up to the noisy congressmen, McClellan mercilessly punched Astor and Livingston in the face.

The fragments of Livingston's gold-wire monocle pierced McClellan's knuckles, but in his rage, McClellan felt no pain at all.

McClellan, who had kicked Livingston away, grabbed Astor by the collar and roared like a lioness who had lost her cubs.

"Break out! Break out! Break out your mother's head! If you guys who don't understand military affairs hadn't been making noises and meddling, Joseph and these boys of mine wouldn't have died! Give me back my soldiers! Give me back my soldiers!"

If it weren't for these people and the constant pressure on him from Washington, with his sufficient preparations before the war, he could have relied on his abundant reserves of supplies and ammunition to hold out in Omaha for half a year or even longer!

And there wouldn’t be so many young soldiers who died in vain!

But now, everything has come to nothing.

Seeing that the situation was getting out of control, several Union brigadier generals and colonels in the command post had to come out to hold McClellan back to prevent the situation from escalating further.

Two or three colonels who were trying to stop the fight couldn't help but punch these high-handed congressmen a few more times. Like McClellan, these senior officers of the Omaha Corps had long been dissatisfied with these congressmen who were always causing trouble but could not do anything helpful. They were all holding back their anger and were worried about having no place to vent it.

(End of this chapter)