Chapter 389 Setting up a pontoon

"General, please rest assured that we have promised our teacher before Yunnan. In this battle with the state to cross the river, we will do our best to ensure the smooth crossing of the Yangtze River by the Fourth Army, and will never delay our army's Jiangnan strategy!" Fang Biyun said with a serious face.

Meng Enyuan nodded after listening. He was quite satisfied with Biyun's attitude. At the same time, he also believed that Fang Biyun had the ability to lead the task force to successfully build a pontoon bridge.

The difficulty of building a pontoon bridge, especially on the Yangtze River several kilometers wide, and requiring completion in a short time, is conceivable, not to mention extremely difficult for the army in 1908, even for the army in the 21st century.

In order to set up a pontoon bridge in Hezhou and successfully ensure that the Fourth Army crossed the river, the Feng army has transferred a large number of technical officers from various engineering forces. Most of these officers are from professional engineering departments, and the best of them is Fang Biyun.

Fang Biyun, a native of Zhengzhou, Henan Province, like most young people, used to be a reader of four books and five classics, but with the Gengzi Incident, the Qing court began to educate and reform. He studied a new school with the public, and then went north to join the army. Of course, he did not become a leader, but went to the army to recruit staff and successfully entered. The third mixed brigade at that time became Qingshu.

Then he was admitted to the Third Mixed Brigade Suiying School. Due to his outstanding German talent, he mastered German in just one year. Later, he was recommended by Zhao Dongyun to study in Germany and became one of the many Beiyang military students sent to Germany. Unlike many German students who like to study foot, riding and artillery. He chose the relatively unpopular engineering department. After two years of his career in Germany, he first went to China in 1907 and went directly to the northeast to join Zhao Dongyun like many German students.

At that time, the Feng army was extremely lacking in technical officers, especially the engineering, telecommunications and other technical officers. Due to the small number of officers, Fang Biyun's official career was wider than those who studied walking and riding. First, he served as the head of the Zhouqiao Section of the Construction Division of the Quartermaster Department of the Staff of the Command, and then transferred to the third The division served as the commander of the Third Engineering Battalion, and later transferred to the Second Army Command and served as the director of the Second Army Engineering Department, leading the rank of colonel of the army.

During his tenure in the Third Division and the Second Army, he organized a large number of pontoon bridges and opened many temporary roads. Even during the Jiangbei Campaign, he proposed to build a temporary military railway from Zhengzhou, Henan Province to Xuzhou. Although the plan was not approved in the end, the line selected for this temporary military railway It is also used as a follow-up route for the Longhai Railway.

This time, the Feng army transferred a large number of engineering and technical forces from the Feng army in order to cross the river in Hezhou, and formed a 'special engineering regiment' directly under the command and sent it to Hezhou to fight. Fang Biyun was recommended by many generals and transferred to the position of the commander of the task force engineering regiment.

Although this person is naturally not as famous as those excellent foot officers because of his technical positions. Among other things, even Fang Qingkun's reputation in the army is far better than Fang Biyun.

But then, there are more excellent footke officers in the Feng army. There are not many Qingkun, and there are not many others. However, there are really few people who are better than the above in engineering and technical ability!

Out of the Fourth Army Command meeting, Fang Biyun did not stop too much, but went directly to the riverside, where his task force was ready to build the pontoon bridge.

A large number of wooden boards, steel bars and other materials are continuously transported from the rear. Thousands of soldiers of the Task Force are carrying out high-intensity operations. In order to support the task force's pontoon bridge, the heavy and engineering forces in other units of the Fourth Army are also dispatched to transport various materials, etc. .

Before and after Fang Biyun, a middle-aged officer with a lieutenant colonel hanging on his shoulder came up quickly: "Mourage, the river is more gasping than we expected, and it is difficult to carry out wooden pile operations!"

After listening to this, Fang Biyun looked at the operation in the river in front of him. Then he still didn't say anything, but took out the design drawings he carried with him. After a while, he said, "First, suspend the wooden pile operation in the heart of the river. It should be filled with sand and stone and then fixed with iron cables. In addition, you can urge the people behind them to let them Hurry up and bring the wooden box here!"

Fang Biyun did not show any surprise about the many technical problems that have arisen now. The technical difficulty required to set up a pontoon bridge on the Yangtze River several kilometers wide should be completed in just a day or two, and this still requires a pontoon that can successfully cross the river with up to one ton of artillery. From the beginning, he did not think how smooth the construction process would be, and various problems in the construction process had been expected.

However, Fang Biyun has been prepared for this. In order to set up the pontoon bridge this time, he arrived in Hezhou more than a month ago, led several technical officers to personally repeatedly explore many river channels in Hezhou, and also figured out the water level. According to this information, he finally designed the design of the pontoon bridge. At the same time, in order to deal with various problems that may arise in the process of setting up the pontoon bridge, he has also prepared many emergency plans with many technical officers. If Plan A doesn't work, change to Plan B, and if it doesn't work, Plan C.

Fang Biyun personally took command, not only to coordinate the arrangement of construction, but also to solve many technical problems at any time. Under such circumstances, as time passed, a small section of bridge surface began to appear on the originally flat river surface one after another, and this bridge surface continued to extend to the south bank.

The designed pontoon bridge will make great use of the small yellowzhou in the middle of the river to shorten the overall length of the pontoon bridge. In short, this pontoon bridge is divided into two sections, one is connected from the north bank to the small yellowzhou, and the other is connected from the small yellowzhou to the south bank. Considering that the small yellowzhou is only an alluvial sandbar, the soil quality is relatively Soft, there is a muddy section, and if the 75mm field gun weighing one ton walks on it, it is possible that the wheels of the gun truck will fall into it, which will affect the overall speed of crossing the river, so we have to solve this problem at the same time.

Due to the tight time, it is impossible to transport gauze soil to cover the road. Finally, Fang Biyun proposed to directly use boards to pave the road. It is more convenient to transport boards than to transport sand. Moreover, the erection of a pontoon also requires thick boards as the bridge deck. Although the overall number of boards required is large, these wood can be prepared. As early as Before the successful formation of the Fourth Army, the construction office of the Quartermaster Department had organized personnel to prepare a large number of wooden boards in Hezhou. In order to obtain the wood needed to build pontoons and manufacture ships for the troops to cross the river, the Feng army almost cut down all the fine wood in Hezhou and surrounding areas.

While the task force was nervously building a pontoon bridge, another regiment of the 17th Brigade, that is, the soldiers of the 34th Regiment, also boarded the ship one after another and rowed towards the other side.

In the Fourth Army's plan to cross the river, the first batch of crossing the river was the 9th Division, and the 9th Division was divided into two batches. Its 17th Brigade will be responsible for crossing the river first. They will only carry guns, heavy machine guns and 80mm mortars to cross the river, but they have no way to carry artillery, even if It is a mountain cannon crossing the river, and there is no way to carry a war horse across the river.

After crossing the river, their task will be to establish preliminary beach fortifications with rifles, mortars and machine guns, and expand the strategic depth of the beach head about five kilometers to avoid artillery strikes on the floating bridges and river crossing troops erected by the Anhui army after the arrival of the Anhui army reinforcements.

The transportation of the 17th Brigade across the river may need to continue until afternoon. In the subsequent ships, some of the larger wooden boats will be used as piers of the pontoon, while the remaining small ships will continue to transport bullets, mortar shells and other combat weapons to maintain the 17th Brigade. Need for combat on the south coast.

In this process, in fact, the utilization efficiency of ships is relatively low. First of all, not to mention the time it takes to cross the river again and again, and often after the ships return from the south bank to the north coast, they have to rely on manpower to pull them upstream before crossing the river for the second time.

Because the water of the Yangtze River is flowing, the ships do not cross the river from the north bank to the south bank and then return to the north bank in a diagonal line. After the ships slant to the south bank, and then from the south bank to the north bank, they are often several kilometers away from the original starting point. At this time, the ship must be pulled or moved to the upstream. The starting point is to carry out the next ferry transportation.

Therefore, not only the small ships used by the Feng army have a large number of bamboo platoons, but their own load is extremely low. At the same time, many bamboo platoons are not suitable for carrying ammunition, so it is quite troublesome and inefficient to use ships to maintain supplies.

If only relying on these temporary wooden boats, the bamboo raft can support the combat supplies of an entire division. Meng Enyuan has already sent the whole 9th Division one by one. Why send only a 17th brigade first? It's not that he doesn't want to take the 9th Division across the river, but that the transportation capacity is really limited.

After transporting the 17th Brigade, the remaining ships are poor enough to transport supplies and maintain the 17th Brigade. If some ships are divided to transport the 18th Brigade of the 9th Division, the soldiers fighting on the front line can get less combat materials. The bullets are okay, and the dozens of rounds carried by the soldiers can still support it for a period of time. During the battle, but machine gun bullets and mortar shells will be very troublesome.

In this way, too many troops are directly light instead of doing anything good.

Based on this consideration, the 9th Division only arranged for the 17th Brigade to cross the river, and the 17th Brigade was limited by the lack of ammunition after crossing the river. Considering that if it continues to go deep into the south coast, it will not be supported by its own artillery firepower. After all, the Fourth Army does not have 100mm cannons of cannons. Two heavy artillery battalions, one in Anqing and one in Jinling. All the Fourth Army has is the common 75mm field guns. Although the models are somewhat different, the range is generally about 8 kilometers.

Such a range determines that even if the artillery of the Feng army directly sets up a position by the river, the distance that the Feng army's artillery can support after several kilometers across the Yangtze River is quite limited.

Therefore, although the 17th Brigade, especially the 33rd Regiment, quickly launched an attack after crossing the river to seize multiple tactical points, their range of activities was still limited to the range of five kilometers from the landing point, and after seizing the tactical points of the above range, they did not continue to move forward, but one by one Feng soldiers. They all waved engineering shovels and began to dig trenches and build machine gun positions.

They want to block the Seventh Division of the Anhui Army or other Anhui troops that may be reinforced here!

As long as the 17th Brigade can block the anti-offensive troops of the Anhui Army, the task force can continue to construct and build the pontoon bridge. Once the pontoon bridge is completed, the main force of the Fourth Army will immediately cross the river. At that time, the cavalry, artillery and a large number of ammunition will cross the river. Only then Only then can we say that the Fourth Army has successfully crossed the river.

Although the 17th Brigade has passed a 33rd Regiment, it is far from saying that the river crossing plan has succeeded!

The Feng army was so prepared, and the Anhui army did not disappoint them too much. Just a few hours later, at one o'clock at noon, Fang Qingkun saw a large number of Anhui troops from the north from his telescope!