Early in the morning on the 22nd, the artillery of the Fourth Line Regiment began shelling again, using only incendiary bombs.
Before the Japanese infantrymen could even drink the hot porridge, they were shocked by the overwhelming incendiary bombs and poured them all onto the ground.
Compared to a delicious breakfast, life is obviously more important.
The Chinese incendiary bombs are not the same as the sulfur bombs equipped with Japanese artillery. They are mixed with white phosphorus and other chemicals. The little flames look beautiful, but they are terrible when they fall on the body. They can not only burn through cotton clothes
It can even burn into your skin all the way to your bones.
Even though there are many evergreen trees here, which cannot be ignited by ordinary fire, under the power of this kind of incendiary bomb, it will burn like a raging fire.
Originally, the early mornings in the cold winter were the coldest, with temperatures almost below zero. However, after such incendiary bombs were ravaged, the temperature of the entire battlefield increased by at least ten degrees, making even cotton-padded clothes unbearable.
Fortunately, after yesterday evening's lesson, Major General Zhen Gu ordered the entire army to build fortifications such as individual gun-proof holes overnight. The main destructive effect of incendiary bombs is burning, and the damage to the fortifications is not as great as that of explosive grenades.
Unless you are unlucky enough to be hit directly by a cannonball, your life can still be saved.
However, under the vigorous bombardment of 12 mountain guns and more than a dozen mortars, more than a dozen hilltops were ignited with raging fires, and thick smoke shot straight into the sky.
The 24 mountain guns of the Zhengu detachment also began shelling in retaliation, also blasting the Sifangwan Yidai high ground into billowing smoke.
The artillerymen from both sides were firing back and forth, creating a lively scene.
But soon, the movements of the artillerymen on both sides slowed down because they were sweating and wished they could beat them naked in the winter.
Because there was a dull roar from the sky, and in less than two minutes, a large black spot flew in the light of the winter sun.
Compared with the Chinese artillerymen who shouted and pushed the artillery into the hidden fortifications, the Japanese artillerymen looked much more relaxed.
If nothing else goes wrong, the ones that came should be Imperial fighter planes. Although the Navy fools are not trustworthy, their bombs are still reliable, and there are very few accidental bombings.
However, as the fleet approached and began to lower its altitude, the Japanese commanders, who were looking at the sky with high-powered telescopes, waved their hands and screamed in horror, asking the artillery to stop shelling and evade.
Because the tail of the plane they saw was not painted with a bright red sun, but with a white one.
What came this time was not a Japanese Navy fighter plane, but a Chinese Air Force fleet, totaling 24 Wildcat fighters and 8 bombers.
The total number of 32 fighter planes is a large-scale bomber group that has rarely been seen by the Chinese Air Force in the past two years. Such a large-scale bomber group was not used even to bomb Yiling and Jingmen airports.
So why did this bad luck happen to the little Needle Valley detachment?
Tang Tuanzuo knew how bad this thing was, but the Chinese Ministry of Military Affairs and the Air Force Command did not know that. From a tactical perspective, no one would have the turn of the Needle Valley Detachment to suffer such a bombing.
It was all the idea of Commander Chen who was in charge of Enshi. On the evening of the 21st, when this civil engineering department boss received the battle report from Commander Hu on the movements of the Japanese troops that day, the clouds on his face were so thick that they were almost dripping with water.
The so-called "civil engineering", when broken down, is actually the 18th Army. To put it bluntly, without the 18th Army, the civil engineering department will have no foundation. The Battle of Shipai is not only about the survival of the country, but also about him.
The future status of leading figures in the civil engineering department in the military.
The two main divisions of the 18th Army are already working extremely hard on the central battlefield and the right wing battlefield of Shipai. Although the division commander surnamed Hu still has two regiments of reserve teams that have not been brought to the battlefield, it means that there is still a chance to fight, but that is only for the 18th Army.
Position, does not mean anything else.
Especially the extremely important left-wing position. If the flank is broken, no matter how strong the 18th Army is, it will be difficult to resist when tens of thousands of Japanese troops are surrounded on three sides.
The combat effectiveness of the Si Xing Regiment has actually far exceeded the imagination of the general commander. It has already blocked the attack of 40,000 Japanese troops in Niuchangpo and Zhujiaping. No matter from which angle he stands, Commander Chen can no longer ask the Si Xing Regiment.
Do better.
But on the afternoon of the 21st, as a Japanese army with a strength of more than 7,000 bypassed the Zhujiaping defense line and penetrated directly into the flank of the Shipai central position, the battle situation took a turn for the worse.
If Commander Chen's guess is correct, in order to resist the 40,000 Japanese troops, the main force of the Si Xing Regiment has been exhausted. Although there will be no shortage of troops in Sifang Bay, it is absolutely impossible to block the crazy attack of 7,000 Japanese troops.
of.
The central position of Shipai, which is nearly 10 kilometers away from Sifang Bay, is also in danger. The division commander surnamed Hu is determined to fight the Japanese army on the second line of defense and never retreat. The reserve teams of the two regiments have already gone to the battlefield, and they are unable to support the flanks.
The so-called death was due to cold lips and teeth. Commander Chen thought for a long time and actually bypassed the Military and Administrative Department and used personal connections to find Commander Zhou of the Air Force and asked him to use fighter planes to assist the Shipai left-wing battlefield.
As everyone knows, this man also owes Tang Dao a favor. Without Tang Dao, his air force only has a hundred old fighter planes. Where can he get nearly a hundred Wildcat fighters?
In the past six months, due to the addition of Wildcat fighter jets, the Chinese Air Force has completed several bombings of airports occupied by the Japanese army, which has provided extremely strong support to the ground battlefields in the Lianghu area, so much so that it has been named and praised by that officer on many occasions.
After receiving the request from Commander Chen and returning a favor to Tang Dao, Commander Zhou called Zheng Ruoyu, who had been promoted to deputy squadron leader of the Air Force, and Shen Chonghai, who had been promoted to deputy captain of the 13th Air Force Brigade, to his residence overnight to listen.
The opinions of these two ace pilots and air force commanders.
What else did these two people have to say? When they heard that they were going to support the Four Elements Regiment, they naturally expressed their all-out effort.
The three hit it off immediately, and immediately gathered all the fighters and bombers at Jiulongpo Airport to prepare for departure. At dawn, the largest air support force of the Chinese Air Force to the ground in the past two years took off one by one.
Tang Dao was woken up from his sleep. Before departure, the Air Force sent a message to the 18th Army headquarters asking the frontline infantry to mark the bombing area for them.
The air force actually came to support, Tang Tuanzuo was really looking forward to it, so of course he ordered Pang Panghai to bombard the area where the Japanese troops were with incendiary bombs.
Viewed from a high altitude, the clearest sign is the thick smoke. The smoke caused by the explosive grenade alone looks strong on the ground, but it is too unclear from an altitude of 1,000 meters.
Of course, before that, Tang Dao also sent out the coordinates of its own position to the Air Force for confirmation. Don't bomb the wrong place. Only one of those 500-pound aerial bombs can send an infantry platoon into the sky.
The air force commander this time was Zheng Shaoyu himself, and Shen Chonghai served as the second commander. After the aircraft fleet arrived over the battlefield, they were not in a hurry to drop bombs. They circled for two full circles and finally determined the bomb target before ordering the aircraft fleet to be divided into four batches.
Take turns entering the 1,000-meter airspace to drop bombs.
The Chinese Air Force dares to be so calm. The first reason is that 'the early bird catches the worm'. Their take-off time is 6:50, and they are only 330 kilometers away from the battlefield. They can fly there in just one hour at cruising speed. Even if the Japanese army
A spy detected the takeoff time of the fighter plane and notified the Japanese Navy at Jiangxia Airport. The Japanese Navy fighter plane, which was 600 kilometers away, could not make it in time.
Another important reason is naturally a huge shortcoming of the Japanese Army itself. Because the Chinese Air Force was weak in the early days, Japanese Army divisions and below rarely had anti-aircraft weapons. Even if they did, the only ones that were on the market were 25mm twin mounts.
Machine cannon.
This is the inertial thinking caused by the weakness of the opponent. The various A divisions of the Japanese Army that entered China found that carrying these heavy machine guns was of no use at all. The fools still carried these things around. Even if they were equipped, they were basically left alone.
In the warehouse where the division headquarters is located.
The Needle Valley Detachment was originally from a Class B division such as the 34th Division, and was not qualified to be equipped with such a 25mm machine gun. The only one that could shoot in the air was the 92 heavy machine gun, and it had to be equipped with an anti-aircraft machine gun mount.
However, facing the 32 Chinese fighter planes constantly circling in the sky, how many machine gunners have the courage to stand in a simple fortification and hold up their heads against the enemy with a machine gun that can effectively shoot only 800 meters high?
What's more, the Chinese fighter planes had no intention of descending to a height of 1,000 meters. After diving to a height of 1,000 meters, they opened the bomb release valve and slammed the bombs one after another into the mountains that were emitting thick smoke.
The 24 Wildcat fighter jets carried a total of nearly 10 tons of bombs, and the eight bombers imported from the United States carried almost another 8 tons. The nearly 20 tons of bombs had just been ravaged by the incendiary bombs over the mountains.
These aerial bombs are all high-explosives and have a potential energy of more than a kilometer. Their power is not comparable to that of artillery.
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Except for the high-level air-raid shelters with a top thickness of five or six meters, the individual artillery-proof holes dug by the Japanese infantry all night do not even need to be hit directly. Even if it explodes more than 10 meters away, the huge vibration can destroy this kind of air-raid shelter.
The shell-proof cavern collapsed.
The worst thing was not the Japanese infantry, but the Japanese artillerymen who were still working hard after the planes arrived. Their busy figures were just seen through the telescopes of the Chinese pilots flying over the battlefield.
Isn't it like being dozed off and meeting a pillow? I was worried that I couldn't find a target for precise bombing, so these Japanese took the initiative to send it over.
More than half of the 32 Chinese fighter planes dropped bombs into the valley where the two Japanese artillery brigades were located.
Six of the 500-pound aerial bombs were accurately dropped into one of the mountain cols!
A mountain col is only 20,000 square meters, but it was visited by 6 heavy aerial bombs. What kind of scene would it be like?
That's hell!
The air wave caused by the explosion of a heavy aerial bomb can easily throw even the Type 41 mountain cannon weighing more than 700 kilograms more than 20 meters away, let alone a fragile human body weighing less than a hundred kilograms.
The field trenches that the Japanese artillery built next to the gun emplacements were no more than 5 meters deep and were as fragile as noodles.
After this round of bombing, a Japanese major who entered the mountain col to check for casualties burst into tears when he looked at the wreckage on the ground.
An artillery brigade deployed in this mountain col only had 3 usable guns, 9 of which were destroyed, 6 of which were either twisted or turned into parts. The death rate of more than 300 artillerymen and 120 pack horses was as high as 100.
Eighty percent of those who are still alive either have their eardrums shattered and become deaf, or they are bleeding from the mouth and nose and are not too far away from death.
The losses of the other artillery brigade were slightly lighter, but four mountain cannons were also destroyed, and 30% of the artillery was lost in battle.
After this round of bombing, not to mention the losses of infantry and other arms, the artillery lost 50%. The sharpest fangs of the Needle Valley detachment were first broken by the Chinese hammer.
"The Chinese actually mobilized all their air force to provide air support to this small position. This shows the importance of this position to the entire Shipai. More importantly, it shows that the Chinese have panicked. They have no confidence at all with infantry alone.
We have the strength to withstand the attack of our detachment." Major General Itsuya Tsutani is worthy of being an experienced general. Not only can he quickly recover from the setback of being hit again, but he is also very skilled in reverse thinking and can quickly analyze the disadvantages and find the right solution.
Beneficial information for one's own side.
It was this awesome reverse thinking that completely pushed the Needle Valley detachment into the abyss of death.
Because this air strike, which gathered the main forces of the Chinese Air Force, was the idea of the Chinese theater-level commander, not the idea of the commander opposite the Needle Valley detachment.
In Tang Tuanzuo's tactical plan, without the air force, he could gradually put these 7,000 Japanese troops to death.
But now, the Japanese army, which has lost half of its heavy firepower, comes to attack, which is undoubtedly more to his liking.
"Attack! We will kill the Chinese while they are trembling, and we will hang their corpses as victory flags on the top of this beautiful mountain. Let them know that this is the price of being an enemy of our Needle Valley detachment.
." Zhitani Yiyuan ordered with a ferocious look in his eyes.
"In addition, I am sending an order to the entire detachment that after this battle is over, our detachment will march to Zigui and destroy all the Chinese villages encountered along the way. The property harvested will belong to the imperial officers and soldiers."
This military order was quickly spread to the entire army, and the Japanese infantrymen of the Needle Valley Detachment, whose morale was low due to shelling and bombing, were instantly revived with full health.
Killing and looting are the best rewards for the beasts. With this promise from Major General Itsuya Tsutani, the bloodshot eyes of the Japanese infantry were filled with the miserable howls of Chinese civilians and all kinds of property. That was what allowed them to
The fastest way for poor families on the island to get rich.
However, the Japanese, who are full of bestiality, have overlooked one point. How can they defeat an army with artillery that is not inferior to theirs with their bravery?
Before them, several major Class A divisions in North China had proved with the lives of countless Japanese infantrymen that they were not very good.
What about the B division? Obviously not.
The Japanese infantry, who were screamed by the blood of their colleagues and the command of the major general's detachment leader, adopted a wave-like charge from the first wave of attack.
The 1st Battalion's MG42 machine guns deployed on various highlands did not tolerate them. In just one morning, the MG42 machine guns of each squad fired 150,000 rounds of ammunition. That is the firing capacity of each machine gun of 4,100 rounds.
This extremely exaggerated ammunition consumption, let alone the Japanese who paid a heavy price, would be shocked. Even Director Zhuang Da, who was in charge of logistics, could not help but feel distressed when he saw the ammunition replenishment reported by the 1st Battalion Logistics Section Chief.
Straight up.
The ammunition of the Fourth Line Regiment was not blown by strong winds. Not to mention how much money it costs to purchase, but how much manpower and effort it takes to transport these ammunition. Do you who are battalion commanders know? Those officers and soldiers of the baggage battalion use push carts.
Is it okay to transport it over 2,000 miles from the Taihang Mountains?
With 150,000 rounds of ammunition and a weight of about 1,500 kilograms, it would require 8 pack horses or 15 heavy troops to work exhaustingly.
Well, guys, your 1st Battalion finished it in one morning.
Moreover, this is just a machine gun. If you add rifles and submachine guns, your 1st battalion cannot shoot out 300,000 rounds?
Don't tell me, Director Zhuang Da, who is very good at statistics without any teacher, really guessed it right. Throughout the morning, the total bullet consumption of the 1st Battalion was more than 280,000 rounds.
And this quantity is already close to the ammunition distributed by the Needle Valley Detachment, which uses 4,000 infantry to attack.
The idea is that it is the distribution, not the firing amount.
In fact, most of the infantrymen of the Needle Valley Detachment who died on the battlefield only fired one-tenth of their allotted bullets.
The needle valley detachment, which has a much higher strength than the defenders of the 1st Battalion of the Fourth Line Regiment, fired less than 100,000 rounds this morning, and half of them were completed by more than 40 Type 92 heavy machine guns and more than 30 Type 96 light machine guns.
.
Leng Feng, the chief of staff of the Fourth Army Regiment and commander of the 1st Battalion, was best at head-to-head confrontation. He did not use any surprise attack tactics at all, but relied on massive ammunition output to turn the morning of January 22 into a bloody morning.
The Needle Valley detachment will probably never forget this bloody morning.
Because, this morning alone, they lost more than 2,400 infantry in front of the Chinese high ground.
However, how could the existence of the Meat Grinder No. 2 in the entire Shipai Battlefield end with the loss of 2,400 people?
After a brief rest for more than an hour, Major General Itsuhara Tsutani, who had completely lost his mind, wrapped his head in white cloth and threw 3,500 Japanese troops, including baggage troops and engineers, less than 800 meters away from the front-line position to continue the attack.
.
The Japanese lunatic major general who has already entered the gambling table is determined to try his best, or die if he doesn't succeed!
The long-awaited 4th Battalion of Cai Yongguan finally got the opportunity to go to the battlefield. The major battalion commander personally led his sharp knife to the front line.
Moreover, under his order, the attack sequence consisting of 300 Japanese engineers on the high ground was placed at the red line distance of 50 meters in front of the position before the attack began.
What it means to be thrown off your back, the battlefield created by Battalion Commander Cai himself vividly reflects this scene.
The 300 Japanese Army Engineers managed to save their lives and a dozen soldiers jumped into the trenches, but Battalion Commander Cai Da, who was holding a thick-backed knife in the trenches, did not give them a chance to breathe. He killed 7 people in a row in 3 minutes, and also made a round and round blow.
The head and helmet were thrown out.
The 300 Japanese troops were completely destroyed in front of an infantry platoon of the 4th Battalion, and not a single one of them escaped.
There is no particularly typical battlefield, because all highland battles are so fierce that there is no other word to describe them except death.
During the entire day on the 22nd, the sound of gunfire and artillery stopped for more than an hour. The fighting was so intense that the division commander surnamed Hu sent six messages in a row to pay attention to the Sifang Bay battlefield.
Lonely until dusk!
The 'shit-yellow' remains were scattered all over the frontiers of highland positions in Sifang Bay, shocking even the Japanese naval pilots who passed by in the sky.
In the exact words of the Japanese Navy lieutenant: It was a battlefield I had never seen in my life. The remains of the Imperial Army were as numerous as withered grass. You could clearly see them without a telescope.
The workload of the field medical team of the Fourth Army Regiment is also overloaded. There are 300 stretchers alone!
The remains of the fallen officers and soldiers carried to the mountain col for storage filled an area the size of a basketball court!
