When the Xuebing Army launched its counteroffensive north of the Yangtze River, it was quite vigorous. However, what is disappointing is that the four counterattack lines have made little progress so far. The line where Marshal Zhang is the commander-in-chief was preceded by Miao Chengliu and He Guozhu.
The military rebellion started, and then Hiroshi Nakagawa launched an inhumane surprise attack. Now, although the Nakajima and Yamada regiments that massacred Chinese civilians have been wiped out, the previous military rebellion greatly affected the morale of the Eighth Army's participating troops, and
This resulted in a non-combat casualty of about 10,000 people. Therefore, it is still unknown when the Eighth Army will be able to capture Jiujiang and complete the headquarters' targets. The Eastern Front, where a single hero is the commander-in-chief, suffered in Hainan Island.
The one-man hero who had been fighting for more than two years wanted to have a good fight. However, because the two aircraft carrier fleets under the Japanese Combined Fleet were stationed offshore in Shanghai, and the Kisarazu Air Force deployed two brigades at Hongqiao Airport.
Fifty special attack aircraft. Therefore, when the air combat cannot open up the situation, the single hero can only adopt a steady and steady approach to advance step by step. Naturally, the results that can be achieved are very few. Li Tieshu's road, because of Fox Thirteen's
With the existence of the Santai Guerrilla Column, they should be the easiest to open up the situation, but this is not the case. The Japanese army attaches great importance to Nanjing. They have increased the strength of five divisions in the Nanjing area and abandoned Jiangnan.
Some small and medium-sized towns were not conducive to their defense. As a result, although Li Tieshu's troops recovered a lot of places, because they failed to capture and annihilate the main force of the Japanese army, their results could only be described as mediocre. The achievements of these three routes
The progress made Ouyang Yun very dissatisfied, and his eyes focused on the Western Front led by He Zhengsheng. Ouyang Yun paid special attention to this route for a reason. First, once Hunan could be recovered, it would be equivalent to winning for the rear.
The fastest way to life, it is also more convenient for the student army to intervene in the Sichuan defense war; for both, He Zhengjiang's unit is the most mechanized unit in the student army besides Stern's Jewish army.
He very much looked forward to He Zhengsheng being able to play a classic example of mechanized offensive warfare.
Judging from the power distribution map alone, Hunan is located in the middle between the areas controlled by the Xuebing Army and the Central Army, and is the largest stronghold of the Japanese army south of the Yangtze River in the southwest. Its importance to the Japanese army is naturally self-evident. The Japanese army launched
The fundamental purpose of the Qinling Campaign was actually to deal with the Xuebing Army. To this day, Mitsumasa Yoneuchi and Hideki Tojo no longer regard the Central Army led by Chiang Kai-shek as their biggest obstacle to solving the Chinese Incident. They launched two campaigns before and after
After the New Year's Raiders were defeated, although the senior officers of the Japanese base camp still refused to admit it, in fact they knew very well that they had lost the best opportunity to concentrate their efforts on solving the Xuebing Army.
The Japanese army is too large to lose, and one or two decisive battles are no longer enough to change the fact that they control southern China. Weak first and then strong, it is best to force Chiang Kai-shek's central government to surrender. After the Central Army is eliminated, the Japanese army will have more choices.
, they can either manage the vast occupied area first and slowly accumulate strength while compressing the living space of the student army, or they can first send troops to the Far East or India to completely defeat the British, or they can choose to join Germany in Soviet Russia and defeat the Soviet Union.
Russia will concentrate its efforts on solving the Xuebing Army in the future. No matter what choice they make, one thing is crucial, that is, Hunan, especially Changsha, must not be lost. If Changsha is lost, the Xuebing Army will have the ability to threaten the three towns of Wuhan.
Channel, even if the Qinling Operation achieves its expected goal, the Japanese army will not be able to operate on two fronts at the same time because it has to resist the counterattack of the Xuebing Army along the vast Yangtze River. In that case, the Xuebing Army will not be a big problem that cannot be lost, but may become a problem.
Solve the biggest unsettling factor in China’s affairs,
Mitsumasa Yonauchi and Hideki Tojo successively ordered Anami to defend Changsha. The latter even used his privileges to remove five divisions and three independent mixed brigades from the Kwantung Army and the North China Front Army transferred to the south to the 11th Army, Nishio Hisao resigned as the commander of the China Expeditionary Force. The China Expeditionary Force is facing disbandment. The Central China Front Army will be reorganized. The candidate for the commander of the army is pending. This makes Anami just ready to move, always thinking of performing well to get the Central China Front Army Commander. Now that he had more than 150,000 troops in his hands, his idea became stronger. The order given to him by the Tokyo base camp was to hold the occupied area and crush the counterattack of the cadet army. However, he He thought about bringing Jiangxi back under his rule, and even thought that if the war went well, it would be possible to take advantage of the situation to capture Guangxi. This was the fundamental reason why he ordered Zhongchuan Guang to defend Jiujiang and wanted to fight the Xuebing Army in Changsha.
Because he suffered a big loss in the first confrontation with the Xuebing Army, Anan Weiji behaved better this time. He did not rush to press all the troops, but decided to have a small-scale decisive battle with the Xuebing Army in Hengyang first. , in order to thoroughly understand the true combat power of the Xuebing Army, Anan only accepted the challenge conservatively, but He Zhengjiang went all-out offensive. In this campaign, in addition to leaving a guard brigade and a guerrilla column as reserve forces, he transferred the four divisions The main force also sent out a column of guerrillas, four divisions of Class A tanks, each division had a brigade of tank troops and a brigade of self-propelled artillery troops. Such powerful firepower equipment, from three direction to launch a fierce attack on the Japanese positions in the southern suburbs of Hengyang. The two divisions sent by Anan Weiji and a Korean independent mixed brigade were no match. Anan Weiji originally expected them to be able to hold on to Hengyang for at least two weeks. However, three days later, first The Korean independent brigade was defeated and lost its eastern position due to a reduction of 30% of its personnel. Then a regiment of Japanese troops was cut off from the Japanese position and surrounded and annihilated. Anami was worried that the loss of the troops would be too great and would affect the subsequent decisive battle. At the same time, he felt Lacking the equipment and means to manufacture the mandrill tanks of the student army, they decisively ordered a retreat and voluntarily abandoned Hengyang.
Anami Weiji did not want to see such a tentative small-scale decisive battle, but he did not give up his original idea. When reporting the battle situation to the Tokyo base camp, he avoided the important and neglected the light. He did not talk about the battle losses of the troops, but focused on the mandrills. Due to the sharpness of the tanks, he proposed to the military headquarters that if the mandrill tank troops of the Xuebing Army could not be effectively restrained, then the Changsha Defense War would not be possible at all, and requested the military headquarters to immediately find a way to supplement the Hankou Flying Group.
The mandrill tank of the Xuebing Army has been around for some time. The Japanese army, no matter whether it is a new or old tank, has no resistance to this heavy tank. This has long attracted the attention of the Tokyo base camp. Regarding the mandrill, the Japanese have also come up with several methods. One of the countermeasures is to secretly drop heavy aerial bombs. However, due to the lack of fighter aircraft to restrain the Baiji and the inability to obtain battlefield air superiority, this method has not been able to be applied in actual combat. Now, with the 50 special attack aircraft With the emergence of the Japanese army, it seemed that the Japanese army had the ability to compete for battlefield air supremacy. Changsha was so critical that Tojo Hideki proposed to Mitsumasa Yoneuchi in the name of the military department to give priority to the fifty special attack aircraft that should be allocated to the combined fleet. Mitsumasa Yoneuchi of the Hankou Flying Group did not deliberately contradict him this time, but generously agreed. So, while the top brass of the Cadet Army was still worried about the military rebellion in the Northeastern Army, a regiment of fifty special attack aircraft was transported from Tokyo. Arriving in Shanghai, they then transferred from Shanghai to Wuhan. As these fighter planes arrived at Changsha's frontline airport, in Anan Weiji's view, the time seemed ripe for a decisive battle with the Xuebing Army in Changsha.