Sword of Light: Humanoid Self-Propelled Artillery

Chapter 92 Grenade Launcher Auxiliary Tools

It is obvious that in order to form a huge encirclement, the Japanese broke up their entire organization into combat teams consisting of one squadron at a time, and the interval between two squadrons was three kilometers.

You should know that a Japanese infantry battalion has four infantry companies, and an infantry regiment has three infantry battalions.

In this way, an infantry regiment can form an encirclement line of defense of three to six kilometers.

A Japanese Lion Regiment has four infantry regiments, which means that one Lion Regiment can form an encirclement line of defense of nearly 150 kilometers.

If all the troops under Yoshio Shinozuka were mobilized, they could form an encirclement that was only 600 kilometers long.

Such an encirclement, combined with other Japanese troops, is enough to form a huge encirclement.

Although three kilometers seems very long, it actually doesn't take much time to run. Wang Gensheng still remembers that the standard three kilometers before the time travel was thirteen minutes.

But this is just hiking without carrying anything. If you carry supplies, weapons, etc. and a load of 20 kilograms for a three-kilometer cross-country run, the standard is 26 minutes.

So this much time is enough for Wang Gensheng.

Not to mention twenty-five or twenty-six minutes, even fifteen or sixteen minutes would be enough.

According to Wang Gensheng's battle plan, it would take five minutes to resolve the battle, five minutes to clean up the battlefield and collect the spoils, and another five minutes to retreat.

So twenty-five minutes is more than enough. Even if the Japanese don't bring anything with them, they won't be able to arrive in time.

So Wang Gensheng said without hesitation:

"Twenty-five minutes is more than enough. Get the grenade launcher within three hundred meters. Then, when I lead the assault team within a hundred meters of the target, have the grenade launcher team fire three rapid-fire rounds at me. After they're done, charge in and reap the spoils. We'll try to finish them off in one go!"

As the combat mission was issued, all twenty grenade launchers of Wang Gensheng's grenade launcher team were in place. Of course, the grenade launchers used by Wang Gensheng were naturally the Type 89 grenade launchers snatched from the Japanese devils, not the imitation grenade launchers produced by the arsenal.

The Type 89 grenade launcher is 431 mm long, the barrel is 260 mm long, the caliber is 50 mm, and it weighs 4.7 kg, which is only slightly heavier than the 3.9 kg of the Type 38 rifle.

It has two types of ammunition, one is the special Type 89 grenade and the other is the Type 10 grenade equipped with a powder bowl. However, this type of grenade has been eliminated with the popularization of the Type 97 grenade.

A Japanese grenade launcher team consists of two people, a shooter and an ammunition handler, and can carry sixteen Type 89 special grenades.

The Type 89 grenade launcher is different from the mortar. It is not launched by natural falling but by pulling the trigger.

The shooter kneels or lies down, with the grenade launcher at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground. He first pulls down the firing rod to ready the firing pin, loads the shell, then adjusts the nut on the right side to lock the distance. Finally, he aims at the target with the white aiming line on the barrel, pulls the trigger belt to release the firing pin, and hits the primer to fire the shell.

The Type 89 grenade launcher differs from the older Type 10 grenade launcher first used by the Japanese. The Type 10 grenade launcher has a vent at the bottom of the barrel. Adjusting the vent size changes the amount of gunpowder gas escaping, which controls the range. The Type 89 grenade launcher, on the other hand, has a nut on the right side that connects to a screw inside the barrel. Turning the nut adjusts the length of the screw's extension. A longer extension increases the projectile's distance from the barrel, increasing its volume, lowering the chamber pressure, and shortening its range. Conversely, increasing the chamber pressure increases its range.

Of course, the most important thing is that when the Type 89 grenade launcher launches the special Type 89 grenade, the range can reach 700 meters, but when launching the Type 10 grenade, the range is reduced to only 200 meters due to poor breath holding.

Because of this, the Type 89 grenade launcher completely replaced the Type 10 grenade launcher. There was no other way. The distance at which the Type 10 grenade launcher could fire the Type 10 grenade was too close. A distance of two hundred meters was a very dangerous distance on the battlefield. A machine gunner would be killed with a single shot, and a distance of seven hundred meters was no longer a distance at which a machine gunner could accurately hit the target.

The Type 89 grenade launcher's high- and low-pressure launch mechanism is quite novel. Its core is a high- and low-pressure gas chamber connected by a small hole. The propellant burns in the high-pressure chamber, and the high-pressure gas is ejected from the small hole, expanding in the low-pressure chamber and performing work, propelling the projectile.

Because the orifice is small in diameter and the gas flow is limited, the chamber pressure is low, the pressurization is gentle, and a thinner barrel wall does not matter. This greatly reduces the weight of the weapon and the recoil is also small, and it has been widely used in individual grenade launchers.

Therefore, the Type 89 grenade launcher, which is light and has a long range, immediately became the mainstay of the Japanese's firepower and was equipped in large quantities.

After seeing the potential of the Type 89 grenade launcher, the Japanese army maintained a one-to-one ratio of grenade launchers and light machine guns.

The Type 89 grenade launcher is light and flexible, with a curved and concealed trajectory and a killing radius of eight to ten meters. It has great power and a rich variety of ammunition. When operated by two people, the firing rate can reach forty rounds per minute.

During an attack, grenade launcher teams accompanied the infantry charge, providing close-range fire support. Basically, as soon as our machine guns opened fire, the Japanese would concentrate their grenade launcher fire, forcing the machine guns to move. But how could a heavy machine gun weighing nearly 100 kilograms be moved so easily? For example, at the Battle of Matsudo, of the 36 heavy machine guns the Chinese had, 32 were destroyed by the Japanese grenade launchers.

Of course, the grenade launcher looks light and compact and is the best artillery support for infantry.

But in fact, the Type 89 grenade launcher also has defects, such as being difficult to operate. You must know that the grenade launcher must be placed at a 45-degree angle from the ground to fully exert its firepower.

However, since there is no bracket like the mortar, in actual operation, the forty-five-degree angle depends entirely on the personal experience of the soldiers. The well-trained Japanese soldiers in the early days were fine, but in the later period, the Japanese soldiers who had not received much training had a much worse hit rate when using grenade launchers.

After all, in a battle, who would care whether it was a 45-degree angle? It was good enough to be able to fire the shell.

So in order to solve the problem of inaccurate shooting, Wang Gensheng specially asked a carpenter to make a 45-degree angle bracket. During combat, he would simply lean the grenade launcher against it to make it an angle of 45 degrees.

There is also a pendulum on the bracket, which can detect whether the ground is flat.

With this wooden bracket, the accuracy was immediately improved a lot, even more accurate than those experienced Japanese soldiers.

Of course, the special cavalry company's grenade launcher is not operated by two people, but by only one person, because with horses there is no need for an additional ammunition carrier. An 80-90 special grenade weighs 800 grams and has a charge of 150 grams.

Therefore, an ammunition carrier carries sixteen bullets, which weighs twelve point eight kilograms, which is the limit.

But horses are different. For a horse, carrying not only sixteen missiles, but even sixty missiles would only weigh forty-eight kilograms, which is a piece of cake for a horse.

(End of this chapter)