Because the 10-pound mountain howitzer is so lightweight, it can be pushed up to the fortress on the top of the mountain by the artillerymen.

As the name suggests, the most basic shell fired by the 10-kilogram mountain howitzer is the 10-kilogram spherical iron bullet, although its body barrel is only eight times the diameter, but it is much farther than the long-barreled 40mm caliber infantry gun.

When the artillerymen adjusted the elevation angle to 5 degrees and fired continuously at the bottom of the mountain, the firing range was still quite good.

The original effective range of the 10-kilogram mountain howitzer was more than 900 meters, but now, with the help of a parabola from the mountain down the mountain, the firing range has been further increased to more than 1,000 meters.

At this distance, the cannonball was already at the end of the crossbow, and the projectile fired at a high altitude below zero made the iron ball form an extremely high parabola when it landed, making it almost impossible for the solid cannonball to form a ricochet.

However, in the same way, it is also because of the condescending advantage that when the cannonball reaches the lowest point of kinetic energy and falls, it is endowed with a gravitational acceleration, so that the power of the solid iron ball when it falls becomes larger again, or even larger.

In this case, all the enemies who were smashed by the high orders were almost all blurred flesh and blood, and it could even be said that there were no bones left, which caused a lot of shock to the Houjin army in the western attack, but immediately, the riot was suppressed by the real Tartars who supervised the war in the rear.

And that's just the effect of ordinary solid iron ball shells, in fact, there are other killer weapons in the hands of the artillerymen on the top of the hill that are useless, that is, several other high-powered shells.

Mountain howitzers, no, it should be said that almost all howitzers, can fire a variety of shells such as solid, grenade, shrapnel, shotgun or grape shell, etc.

Its propellant is naturally nothing more than ordinary black powder, and the army artillery is not able to compete with the navy for yellow powder for the time being, usually, the propellant of mountain howitzers is less than 1 catty, and the discharge speed of solid shells is about 200 m / s.

In the era before Chen Xin's crossing, this speed was simply slow, and in later generations, even the muzzle velocity of a pistol was above 300 m/s, and the rifle was even above 700 m/s.

However, these two are not the same, and now this muzzle velocity is firing a 10-kilogram iron ball, not comparable to a bullet weighing a few grams.

Without further ado, a solid bullet is actually a solid metal ball, and the shot put used in physical education classes in later generations was developed from a solid cannonball.

In general physical education classes above middle school, the shot put used is more than 5 kilograms, which is just the weight of a 12-pound solid cannonball.

Among the various shells of smoothbore guns, solid shells have the longest range and the highest accuracy, so they are mainly used to hit enemy formations = columns, fortresses, or other hard targets.

When we refer to the effective range of a certain artillery, we usually mean the range of a solid bullet at an angle of 5 degrees. This solid bullet is the worst of all shells in terms of lethality against personnel, but if it can hit the target, the effect is quite terrifying.

The widely circulated description of the power of solid artillery shells is still during the American Civil War, when a Confederate soldier once wrote in his diary: "We were bombarded by an artillery battery of Yankees······ I heard a loud bang on my right, and as soon as I turned my head, I saw a headless body standing upright, blood spurting out of its neck at least a foot. I looked back and saw three more bodies lying on the ground, all hit by the same shell, the second time I had seen a single shell kill four people. ······

Each time the shell hit a little lower, knocking off the first's head, passing through the second's chest and the third's stomach, knocking out the fourth's intestines. ”

Therefore, as long as it is a cannonball, it should not be underestimated, even if it is just a solid ball.

The second type of shell fired by a 10-pound mountain howitzer is called a grenade. It weighs about 8 pounds, is a hollow iron ball, contains 200 grams of gunpowder, after exploding, will form about 5 to 12 pieces of shrapnel, with a range of more than 800 meters.

This kind of shell is a hole in the spherical shell and equipped with a time fuse to detonate it at a regular time. Since it is impossible to artificially determine which part of the spherical shell hits the ground first when it lands, there is no way to use the impact fuse.

The third type of shell is called the shrapnel shell, which historically was invented by General Henry Schlapnell of Great Britain in the early 19th century, hence the name shrapnel shell (i.e. Schlapnell shell).

This grenade bomb weighs about 10 pounds, and like the grenade, it is a hollow iron ball, which contains more than 80 lead bullets with a caliber of 18.5mm and 130 grams of gunpowder.

The projectile used in the shrapnel and shotgun is the spherical bullet used in the smoothbore rifle of the Chinese Army, and the 18.5mm caliber lead projectile used in smoothbore guns and artillery is weighed 35 grams. Now it has been widely equipped in the Chinese army and navy. Even a servant army.

The effective range of the grenade is slightly closer, about less than 700 meters, and the shrapnel also uses the time fuse, when the shell flies over the enemy, it explodes, if the time fuse is set accurately, the lethality of this shell is very large.

However, it should be noted that the explosives in the shrapnel only blow up the shell of the shell, and its energy can only slightly change the flight direction of the projectile.

Therefore, after the shrapnel explodes, the bullets loaded inside it will not fly in all directions, but continue to fly forward after dispersing, and its main purpose is to kill and injure living targets in the sector area in front. This is different from the high-explosive grenades used later in World War I and World War.

Because of the straight trajectory of the grenade bomb, the shrapnel is actually almost a safe area below the explosion of the grenade bomb.

However, if the trajectory of the grenade is curved, for example, a shrapnel fired from a mortar gun (a stubby barrel, the ancestor of the mortar), then only the underside of the grenade is the kill area.

The next type of shell was the shotgun, which was a canister-like container made of thin iron sheets, with spherical projectiles and some soft stuffing such as sawdust.

10 pounds of mountain grenade shotgun, which contained 148 pieces of 18.5mm caliber lead bullets. The shotgun does not need a fuse, and after being fired, the thin canister-like container bursts under the impact of strong kinetic energy, and countless projectiles are fired out of the container.

It's like a huge shotgun, and it can only be used for direct fire, and the effective range of the shotgun is the shortest of the above shells, less than 270 meters.

As for the power of the shotguns, you only need to imagine the scene when 148 smoothbore guns are firing at a small area at the same time.