Nowadays, in our People's Liberation Army, there is a special training program - mortar single-soldier shooting, commonly known as "one-handed firing". When firing, operated by the artillery single person, the left hand supports the gun body, the right hand puts the shell, in the case of neither a sheet of seat, nor a gun mount, nor a sighting equipment, completely rely on autonomous aiming, hand gun fire, no false fire, but also can do rapid continuous shooting! This project is not a bold and careful person who dares not do it, and it is a severe test for the personal will of the artillery, military technology and combat mentality.
This kind of subject, at least the author has not heard of any foreign army unit can complete. It may seem to them that one-handed artillery is both dangerous and unnecessary, and it belongs to the flower work on the battlefield and has no practical significance. Is one-handed firing really a flower job? So why should our army continue to maintain this training program? In fact, this technology is not a flower, and when used well, it is powerful enough to be one to two. Moreover, it is true that some people in the history of our army have done this, and they have also made achievements. It can even be said that he evolved this military skill into an artillery "art" of a hundred shots. This person is Major General Zhao Zhangcheng, who is known as the "God of Artillery," and former deputy commander of artillery of our People's Liberation Army!
Zhao Zhangcheng was born in Luoyang, Henan in 1905, and at a young age joined the Second Army of Feng Yuxiang, the king of the northwest, and became a mortar soldier. In the era of warlord chaos, Zhao Zhangcheng turned to the whole country and assiduously honed his artillery skills. Although he has little culture, he is good at using his brain, and can often have some ingenious methods that are different from ordinary people, so his shooting skills are very good.
Red Army Gun God
In 1931, Zhao Zhangcheng accompanied the army to encircle and suppress the Central Soviet Region, was infected by the local revolutionary atmosphere, abandoned the dark and cast light on the Battlefield of Baisha in Jiangxi, and automatically joined the Red Army. The Red Army attached great importance to people with special military talents like him, and soon made him the platoon commander of the special service battalion of the Independent Division of the Red Army, and soon became the captain of the artillery training team of the Red Army and the commander of the artillery company of the Ninth Division of the Red Army. At this time, although Zhao Zhangcheng was named an artilleryman, there was a serious shortage of various types of artillery in the Red Army, and it was difficult for him to cook without rice.
In July 1931, Chiang Kai-shek personally served as commander-in-chief, mobilized 300,000 troops, hired a number of military advisers from Germany, Japan, Britain and other countries, and carried out "encirclement and suppression" in three ways to the central base areas in three ways with the tactic of "gathering troops in a thick way, besieging by separate routes, and driving straight in". Under the leadership of Chairman Mao and Commander-in-Chief Zhu, the Red Army adopted the tactic of "luring the enemy to go deeper, avoiding his main force, and fighting his weakness," interspersed thousands of miles, attacking the east and the west, and finally defeated the enemy and smashed the enemy's third "encirclement and suppression."
In this battle, the Red Army captured a lot, not only with mortars, but also with type 37 flat-firing guns. The Red First Army immediately decided to form an artillery battalion with two artillery companies and an engineer company, with Zhao Zhangcheng as the battalion commander, and grasped the daily military training.
The Red Army did not have its own military industry at this time, and if it wanted to obtain artillery and shells, it basically had to rely on capture, so it was a little less. Moreover, the lack of parts is also a big deal, and at any time it can make a cannon a scrap iron. In this case, Zhao Zhangcheng was simple because of his ugliness, constantly summed up lessons and lessons, and finally opened up all the joints and reached the realm of "human and artillery integration". He was particularly proficient in mortar shooting, and it was at this time that he creatively developed the unique task of "one-handed artillery". This unique skill became a life-saving skill of the Red Army in future battles.
Zhao Zhangcheng's one-handed firing position is very unique. His firing posture, known scientifically as the "artillery firing method", is generally used by artillery observers to indicate targets to gunners. The specific operation is that the gunner's right arm is extended forward, the elbow is slightly bent, the five fingers of the palm are pointed to the target direction at the same time, and the thumb is slightly bent towards the palm. This posture is very similar to the shaolin martial monk's one-handed Buddhist ritual, so many people mistakenly believe that Zhao Zhangcheng believes in Buddhism and worships the Buddha before each shooting, which is rumored to be a joke for a while.
The seemingly compassionate "artillery-given firing method" is actually extremely powerful. As long as the gunner's gun control level is guaranteed, the muzzle, finger and target can form a three-point line, and the shot is more accurate than the sniper rifle on the battlefield! Of course, the distance also needs to be measured by the gunner with the "jumping eye method". Relying on this aiming method, the mortar operated by Zhao Zhangcheng was almost bulletless! In the subsequent anti-encirclement and suppression battles, Zhao Zhangcheng and his artillery gradually became the most important weapon of the Red Army.
On September 25, 1933, Chiang Kai-shek stubbornly implemented the policy of "foreign countries must first be at home" despite the fact that the Japanese aggressors had already invaded north China, mobilized about 1 million troops, adopted the new strategy of "fortress doctrine", and carried out large-scale "encirclement and suppression" of the central revolutionary base areas. At the same time, in the Central Soviet Region, the "left-leaning" clique headed by Wang Ming and Li De occupied a leading position, stubbornly using foreign position warfare methods to resist encirclement and suppression, and refusing to accept Chairman Mao's correct movement warfare strategy. After a year of bitter fighting, the Red Army, which had been completely passive, was forced to withdraw from the Central Soviet Zone and begin the largest strategic shift in human history - the Long March!
After the brutal Battle of the Xiang River, the Red Army chose the breakthrough point of the transfer along the Wu River. The task of opening the gap was given to the 4th Regiment of the Red 2nd Division, and although the regimental commander Geng Biao fought bravely, the Wujiang Tianjian was indeed worthy of the name, and the first attack ended in failure. At this time, there were Qianjun defenses in front of wujiang, and eight divisions of the Kuomintang Central Army in the back, and the situation was very critical. Li De, an adviser to the Comintern, concluded that the Red Army's forced crossing of the Wu river would be worse than the defeat in the Battle of the Xiang River! At this time, Liu Bo, chief of the general staff, was ordered to personally go to the front line to command.
Liu Bocheng arrived at the bank of the Wujiang River, inspected the terrain, and immediately made arrangements. In addition to relying on the mountain to block enemy reinforcements and cutting bamboo to make bamboo rafts, he specially made reports and applied for artillery support! Moreover, the application letter specifically stated that the headquarters should send the sharpshooter Zhao Zhangcheng to the front line!
Soon, the Red Army's second daytime crossing began. Zhao Zhangcheng, who had already come to the battlefield, immediately organized artillery to provide fire support. The enemy's fire point was mercilessly spewing out tongues of fire, and after Zhao Zhangcheng observed, he continued to use the "artillery-given firing method" and first tried to fire a shot, but the result was not accurate. After a brief adjustment, the second shot hit the target, knocking out the enemy's fire point with one blow. After our army successfully crossed the river, it was glued to the enemy at the beachhead. At this time, Zhao Zhangcheng fired another shot, accurately hitting the enemy's counterattack troops. The enemy's counter-charge then collapsed, and the Red Army took advantage of the situation to break through the dangerous Wujiang River.
Breaking through Wujiang was just a small test of the bull knife, and soon, a new test for Zhao Zhangcheng arrived. On May 25, 1935, the Red Army, which had just crossed the Jinsha River, broke through the siege and urgently needed to continue to move. The rushing Dadu River became another obstacle to the Red Army. In 1891, it was here that Shi Dakai, a famous general of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, was completely annihilated. At this time, the headquarters of the Red Army decided to let the Red Fourth Regiment of the Red Army led by Yang Dezhi seize the Luding Bridge, which was erected in the midst of natural danger! In order to ensure the success of the mission, the Red Army headquarters concentrated a large number of relatively sophisticated weapons and handed them over to the Red Fourth Regiment for attack, including Zhao Zhangcheng's artillery.
In this battle, the march is very difficult. The time spent by the Red Fourth Regiment to carry out orders was only one day and one night. However, the distance from the starting point to luding bridge is 240 miles! However, the soldiers of the Red Army never flinched in the face of orders. After a simple packing, everyone ran forward and ran wildly in the direction of Luding Bridge! It was a legendary march when it was pouring rain and winding paths on the cliffs. The Red Fourth Regiment was not afraid of hardships and dangers, fighting with the enemy who set off a day earlier than themselves, and everyone's body had reached its limit. Because artillery need to carry guns and shells, the difficulty of rushing to march is especially higher than that of infantry.
By the time the troops arrived at the battlefield at the scheduled time, everyone was exhausted. At this time the regimental leaders began a simple combat meeting, while the soldiers seized the time to rest. Zhao Zhangcheng also simply sorted out the equipment on a large stone. At this time, his gun mount was long gone, there was no auxiliary gunner around him, and there were only 3 shells left! The so-called artillery is actually very simple. As soon as he had finished his adjustment, the regimental commander Yang Dezhi urgently summoned Zhao Zhangcheng and asked him to use artillery fire to support the Red Army troops who had already landed on the beachhead on the opposite shore.
In this battle, Yang Dezhi adopted a two-pronged combat method: on the one hand, more than twenty fighters climbed the iron cable and attacked the enemy's bridgehead position from the front; on the other hand, eighteen fighters from the temporary organization formed a death squad, drove a small boat to the opposite shore desperately, and attacked the enemy from the flank and rear. However, after landing on the dadu river, the eighteen warriors who forcibly crossed the Dadu River were suppressed by enemy fire on the beachhead and could not advance! If this road does not complete the intended tactical detour, the frontal attack of the warriors will suffer heavy losses, and the time taken to seize the bridge will be much longer than expected! Seeing this scene, Yang Dezhi resolutely ordered Zhao Zhangcheng to carry out an artillery strike on the enemy!
Zhao Zhangcheng showed his amazing cannon kung fu at this time. I saw him take a look at it like a Buddha, and then hold the barrel in one hand and load the shell with the other. With three cannon shots at a very short interval, 3 shells were fired without false fire, accurately destroying 3 fire points on the opposite shore! Judging from the density of artillery fire, the enemy thought that the artillery company of the Red Army on the opposite side had come, and immediately broke up in morale, abandoning the position and turning around and running. Eighteen warriors successfully occupied their positions and attacked the enemy's flanks. In the end, the Luding Bridge was taken by our army, and the Red Army successfully completed the transfer. After this battle, Zhao Zhangcheng's nickname quietly changed from "Divine Gunner" to "Gun God", and his reputation gradually spread in the army.
Anti-Japanese meritorious service
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Zhao Zhangcheng served as the battalion commander of the Artillery Regiment of the Headquarters of the Eighth Route Army, the director of the artillery of the 129th Division, and the director of the artillery of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia-Jinsui Joint Defense Army. Since then, the focus of Zhao Zhangcheng's work has changed from personally charging into the battlefield to cultivating new people and upgrading existing weapons. In these areas, the achievements of the "Gun God" are still remarkable.
By the end of September 1940, the Hundred Regiments War had entered its second phase. On September 23, the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army launched the Battle of Yu (She) liao (county) in preparation for the removal of Japanese strongholds along the road from Yushe to Liaoxian County. The most difficult thing to capture is the stronghold of the pipe head next to the highway. The Japanese army relied on the terrain here to build a strong fortification, and the light weapons of our Eighth Route Army were limited in damage. The attack began late at night on the 23rd, and the battle was very fierce, and the soldiers of our Eighth Route Army were very heroic, and they almost broke through the enemy's positions many times. On the 24th, the Japanese army, which was already physically and mentally troubled, openly violated international conventions and gassed our army! Our army has no chemical warfare equipment and can only retreat temporarily. With this almost "rogue" style of play, the Japanese army was able to hold out. Until the 26th, our army had not been able to conquer the Guantou stronghold.
Our army's method of operation has always been to "avoid the real and attack the virtual," and the enemy's strongholds are strong, so let's fight in a different way. Therefore, the main force of the Eighth Route Army quietly retreated and took the stone box stronghold in the other direction with a lightning speed. On the 29th, our army returned to attack the Guantou stronghold, and Zhao Zhangcheng, the "god of artillery", also rushed to the front line and personally acted as a "bottle opener."
The enemy's poison gas attack was indeed powerful, but at the same time, it also made Zhao Zhangcheng have an aura. He came up with a brilliant plan: to treat others in the same way as they are. He poured out some of the explosives inside the mortar shells and filled them with chili noodles. In a few moments, the artillery made 20 "pepper shells". After getting ready, Zhao Zhangcheng took 6 novices who had never been on the battlefield and pushed the gun position to 150 meters away from the enemy. In the face of the bullets, Zhao Zhangcheng once again "worshiped the Buddha" to aim, and set up a shooting unit for each gun position. Then, at his command, 4 mortars were fired at the same time, and 20 "pepper shells" fell accurately into the Japanese position. For a time, a strong white smoke and a pungent smell enveloped the enemy bunkers, making the Japanese army unbearable. The Japanese army had just released the poison gas, and at this time the pepper smoke began, and they immediately concluded that the Eighth Route Army had also released the poison gas bomb! The invaders of the foreign strong and the middle cadres ran out of the bunker fortifications one after another and collapsed into an army. Our army took the opportunity to launch a charge, conquered the Guantou stronghold in one fell swoop, and swept away all the Japanese strongholds on the Yuliao Highway.
After the Battle of the Hundred Regiments, the Japanese army launched a frenzied retaliation. They built a large number of pillboxes around the base area of the Eighth Route Army, calling themselves the "cage policy" in an attempt to trap the anti-Japanese soldiers and civilians. Bunkers are "turtle shells" of cement and stone, and it is difficult for any explosives to blow them up from the outside. Therefore, in some battles, the arc attack of the mortar could not destroy the Japanese bunker, and the commandos of the Eighth Route Army could only fight to the death, with huge casualties. Liu Bocheng, then commander of the Taihang Military Region, and Deng Xiaoping, political commissar, gave Zhao Zhangcheng a difficult task: go to the arsenal to assist in the transformation of mortars, and do everything possible to transform mortars into sharp weapons for bombing bunkers!
The best way to blow up a bunker is to fire a flat shell at a weak point in its horizontal position. And horizontal attack is the "soft underbelly" of mortars. Mortar shells must be loaded from the front of the barrel and then fired by firing a naturally sliding bottom detonator. Once the hull of the gun is flattened, the shell cannot slide and cannot be fired. The orders given by the commander are really a problem.
The methods are forced out. Since the gun body must be flattened, it is necessary to find something to help fire the detonator. Zhao Zhangcheng's attack team began to use various things as "collision needles", from mop poles to sorghum stalks, all experimented, but the effect was not good. Later, inspired by the working principle of the grenadier, Zhao Zhangcheng and others made major changes to the mortar and finally solved the problem. The method was to add a 400 mm long tailpipe to the tail of the mortar and then fire it by pulling fire. After modification, the mortar can tilt the chassis to the ground, so that the inclination angle between the barrel and the horizon is kept below 5 degrees, successfully solving the problem of flat firing. After modification, the Type 82 mortar commonly used by the Eighth Route Army can shoot both curved and flat, near or far, and has the function of an infantry gun. Later, this modified mortar was equipped with a large number of troops, creating a miracle of annihilating the enemy one after another. In one battle, a shell fired by our Eighth Route Army went straight through the eyes of the machine guns of the Japanese bunkers! This is not only a military miracle, but also a physical miracle.
Continue the legend
During the Liberation War and the Period of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, Zhao Zhangcheng successively served as director of artillery at the headquarters of the Jinji-Hebei Luyu Military Region, commander of the artillery brigade, commander of the 3rd Artillery Division of the Second Field Army, chief of staff of the Special Forces Column of the Second Field Army, deputy commander of the artillery of the Southwest Military Region, commander of the artillery command post of the Chinese People's Volunteer Army, and commander of the second commander of the artillery of the Volunteer Army. Under his command, artillery has been greatly developed and continues to become a sharp weapon for our army to attack and defeat the enemy.
In 1955, Zhao Zhangcheng was awarded the rank of major general. This is the affirmation of the party and the people for his life's hard work.
In the 1960s, our army's units set off a vigorous "great contest" movement. Zhao Zhangcheng then went down to the grass-roots company, ate and lived with the soldiers, and taught him all his skills. Soon, Zhao Zhangcheng once again became a news figure in the military, and both the People's Liberation Army Daily and the People's Liberation Army Literature and Art made long reports on his teaching activities. The Bayi Film Studio even made Zhao Zhangcheng's shooting demonstration a military teaching film and screened it throughout the army. In the film, Zhao Zhangcheng, who is already a year old, demonstrates "one-handed release of the cannon", holding the barrel without a gun mount in his left hand, and taking the shell with his right hand, shooting at a speed of one shot per second, and the accuracy is extremely high, and the bullet is not false, which is breathtaking.
On July 1, 1966, the missile unit of our army was established and was personally named the "Second Artillery Corps" by Premier Zhou. Although this has a certain secrecy meaning in it, it is also an affirmation of the contribution and ability of the artillery. Zhao Zhangcheng, as a representative figure in the artillery, also felt supreme glory at this moment.
Today, missiles have replaced artillery and become offensive and defensive weapons on the battlefield. However, the power of the artillery is still not something that no one can underestimate. Today, China's self-developed Type 93 60 mm long-range mortar has good performance and is an ideal suppressed artillery for mountain infantry, airborne troops, Marines, and rapid mobile units. The ideals of the older generation of revolutionaries continue to be passed on in the People's Liberation Army. The legendary story of Zhao Zhangcheng, a generation of "gun gods", has also been continuously recited in the People's Liberation Army and continues to play an active role.