The breakthrough location chosen by the 17th Division's 46th Independent Brigade consisted of only one Japanese infantry squadron and one puppet infantry battalion.
If the Japanese defense line, which originally had nearly 800 troops, worked together, even if the 46th Independent Brigade had more than 4,300 troops, it would not be easy to break through the entire defense line in less than 20 minutes.
As a result, the Japanese army was unlucky to have this puppet infantry battalion with more than 500 troops. The reason why the 46th Brigade chose this place instead of other places was because an infantry company commander of the puppet army had tipped it off.
Moreover, it was this puppet infantry company commander who took the initiative to find the 46th Independent Brigade a day ago and gave the 46th Independent Brigade headquarters a clear map of the Japanese defense line he knew.
And why did this puppet infantry company commander do this? It was the fault of the Japanese themselves.
The Japanese massacred every household in the vast countryside of North China. One of the villages turned out to be the home of the infantry company commander who had surrendered in Yuancheng and was forced to serve the Japanese army. His parents, brothers and sisters were all killed. Even if this guy had already knelt down and planned to
I am humble enough to survive, but I cannot accept this news.
However, this man has a deeper mind and pretends to know nothing on the surface, but in fact he has been thinking about how to trick the Japanese. He will not be able to understand his hatred unless hundreds or even thousands of Japanese are killed.
In the Battle of Zhongtiao Mountain, the Japanese mobilized basically regular troops, and the puppet troops only had two regiments. They did not need to go to the front line. They were basically responsible for maintaining the security of the lower communication lines and attacking the Japanese troops on the front line.
But in the eyes of this puppet company commander who buried hatred deeply in his heart, the opportunity finally came.
Before Brigadier Kong Da returned, the 46th Independent Brigade Headquarters, who unexpectedly received this piece of information, actually didn't take it too seriously. After all, the defense was struggling, so there was no idea of taking the initiative to attack.
But the moment Brigadier Kong Da decided to break through the Japanese defense line at all costs, this piece of information became crucial.
After a simple reconnaissance, it was found that this information was basically true, and the entire 46th Brigade gathered its forces and rushed to the area where the Japanese defenses were most vulnerable.
The combat effectiveness of the puppet infantry battalion is not good to begin with. One of the infantry companies collapsed after resisting for less than 5 minutes. The other two are so powerful that they are so strong that they can't stand it?
To put it bluntly, the tragic Japanese infantry squadron bore the remaining 15 minutes alone.
200VS4300, and the opponent also has at least 12 mortars and 12 heavy machine guns. The Japanese army only has 6 light machine guns and 6 grenade launchers. With such a huge disparity in strength, the Japanese infantry squadron can resist for 15 minutes. It is considered a great achievement.
Be tenacious.
A Japanese infantry squadron was completely wiped out, and a puppet infantry battalion collapsed, causing thousands of Chinese to rush out of the encirclement. In fact, this was not enough for Nakamura Masao to angrily denounce his colonel-level infantry commander in public.
After all, he is also one of the top five figures in the infantry brigade, and he, as the leader, has to save some face.
But Nakamura Masao himself has lost all face, and he still looks like a bastard to others.
Fortunately, an artillery battalion of the 5th Artillery Regiment of the 5th Division under the command of Masao Nakamura completed its position transfer at dusk, and happened to be less than 6 miles behind the defense line.
Upon receiving the emergency situation at the front, the artillery brigade not only did not run away, but also immediately provided artillery support.
This was great. Through the trajectory of the artillery shells, Brigadier Kong Da, who had already broken out of the Japanese defense line, judged that the Japanese artillery position was not far away.
What is the role of the 46th Independent Brigade in breaking through the Japanese defense line? Isn't it just to do its best to cause damage to attract the attention of the main force of the Japanese army and reduce the pressure on its own defense line?
The appearance of the Japanese artillery positions was like a doze for the Independent 46th Brigade, which was still a little directionless in breaking through the defense line. They just gave them a pillow. If they hesitated, they would be done with it.
Then, at around 2 a.m., more than 4,000 Chinese soldiers ran for more than 2,000 meters, swooping on the cornfield like locusts.
Before the artillery brigade could react, they were pinned to the ground and rubbed to death.
By the time the main force of the nearby Japanese army responded and came with full support, the Independent 46th Brigade, which had already killed the Japanese artillery brigade, had already left with the captured equipment.
The strength of soldiers and their speed were perfectly demonstrated by Brigadier Kong Da.
Masao Nakamura's 21st Infantry Brigade actually lost far less than Yamada Seiichi in terms of strength alone, but the equipment losses were much greater.
This artillery brigade is an enhanced type. 12 Type 41 mountain guns are standard equipment. 4 105 howitzers are specially equipped by Shiro Itagaki for his Central Group attack group. In addition, there are 4 25mm twin-mounted guns.
The machine guns were originally used for air defense, but at this time there were no Chinese fighter planes on the North China battlefield. The four 25mm machine guns were basically used for ground defense.
If these four machine guns were placed in front of the Japanese artillery brigade, they would certainly be able to block the life-threatening impact of the Independent 46th Brigade, but at least they would cause hundreds of casualties to the Independent 46th Brigade.
However, the artillery brigade of the Japanese army had just moved its position. The trenches were only temporary, and no heavy firepower fortifications had been constructed, so the four 25mm machine guns were not taken out. When thousands of people from the Independent 46th Brigade rushed towards them,
It was too late to use it to fight anymore.
Naturally, the 4 105 howitzers weighing 2 tons could not be taken away. A pile of shells were piled up and exploded into parts. The 12 mountain cannons could be carried on pack horses. The two regimental commanders who were worried about the weapons and equipment urged them to be taken away.
Brigadier Kong Da could only grit his teeth and take away the 12 mountain cannons and 300 rounds of artillery shells with hundreds of pack horses captured at the Japanese artillery brigade's position as spoils of war.
As for the four 25mm twin-mounted cannons, the two infantry regiments were even more treasured. Each infantry regiment had two. They even set up a cannon platoon specifically for this purpose, with more than 40 people driving 10 pack horses and
Two large vehicles are dedicated to serving these two machine guns.
After the war, it was proved that the 12 mountain cannons and 4 machine guns that the 46th Independent Brigade took away at the expense of slowing down the march was indeed one of the wisest decisions in this brilliant counterattack.
Nakamura Masao's Nakajoyama Central Group Attack Group originally had a total of 36 Type 41 mountain guns and 4 105mm howitzers. However, overnight, 24 of the 75mm mountain guns and 4 105mm howitzers were lost.
The 12 mountain cannons owned by the only remaining artillery brigade are not even as many as the number of artillery pieces equipped by an infantry corps of the Chinese 38th Army.
Today, the 38th Army has more than 36 82 mortars, 12 75 mountain guns, and 6 150 heavy guns. This does not include the slightly weaker 96th Army and the Sizhoushan Tang Dao Division that has received reinforcements.
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If we look purely at ground firepower, Nakamura Masao's central attack group is at an absolute disadvantage for the first time.
If the 4th Army Headquarters could seize this opportunity and order a full-scale counterattack, Masao Nakamura's entire face might turn green.
Unfortunately, Shiro Itagaki, who received Masao Nakamura's request for help at around 5 a.m., reacted very quickly and immediately ordered a mixed brigade of the North China Front that was besieging the Fifth Group Army to move closer to Masao Nakamura's headquarters. He also ordered Kunizaki, who had suffered heavy losses south of Ruicheng City, to
An infantry regiment from the detachment headquarters accompanied the 5th Division's last eight 105 howitzers to support Masao Nakamura.
By 9 a.m., Masao Nakamura, who had obtained the support of 8 105mm howitzers and a mixed brigade with more than 5,000 troops, not only regained the heavy firepower advantage, but at least evened the firepower gap.
Yamada Seiichi also assigned two infantry brigades with 2,000 men. Tang Dao, who had completely recovered the high ground, received the reconnaissance report from Li Jiujin who had escaped into the mountains, so he did not make the next attack.
He promised the new regiment soldiers, who were exhausted both mentally and physically, that last night would be the last large-scale battle.
If the Japanese don't come, then both sides will be fine. If they feel they have some support and want to come and cause trouble again, Tang Tuanzuo will not mind giving them a big stick to serve them.
Sizhou Mountain now has not only the 2,000 remaining troops of the new regiment and the baggage company, but also 3 elite infantry companies of the Si Xing Regiment and 12 mountain cannons that can still be used on the periphery.
However, although the Chinese side, with the 4th Group Army as the main force at this time, could not guarantee a comprehensive counterattack against the Japanese army in front of it, it could basically guarantee that the entire line of defense would be worry-free.
As for the Japanese attack group faced by the Fifth Army over there, a mixed brigade was transferred away, so the pressure was reduced a lot.
China, which has been passively beaten, can finally breathe a sigh of relief, but Japan does not dare to take it lightly.
After more than a week of fighting, the Japanese army had already felt that although the Chinese army they faced this time still lacked heavy firepower, they had an unimaginable fighting will with their backs against the river and no way out.
If they allocate their troops to pursue the Chinese army that broke out from the defense line, and the lack of troops causes the Chinese to take the opportunity to counterattack, they may be greeted with a big defeat.
Therefore, in the early morning of the 14th, although it was known that thousands of Chinese people were attacking Ben Ruicheng, the more than 170,000 Japanese troops in front of the 150-mile defense line in Zhongtiao Mountain remained motionless.
Shiro Itagaki pinned his hopes on the Westward Detachment of the 4th Division, which he ordered to be transferred to the direction of Yuncheng dozens of miles away.
In the opinion of this Japanese army lieutenant general, although the "Unscarred Imperial Army" is a bit stretched, it still has nearly ten thousand people. It cannot defeat the thousands of Chinese troops who do not know whether to live or die, at least they will not be defeated.
This may not only be thought by Shiro Itagaki alone, but also by Yuan Sugisugi who is far away in Pingbei City.
Although he was very dissatisfied with the base camp's appointment of Itagaki Shiro as the top commander of the front line, Shanshan Yuan did not want anything to go wrong in this battle. After all, his North China Front dispatched nearly 130,000 people and was the main force in the Nakatiao Mountain Battle. If he was disgraced
, Of course Shiro Itagaki will take responsibility, but as the nominal supreme commander, I am afraid that his face will be disgraced.
However, beyond the imagination of these two Japanese commanders, if the two Army Major Generals Masao Nakamura and Seiichi Yamada were scratched with blood on their faces due to the Chinese night attack and counterattack in the early morning of the 14th, then what happened on the 14th?
The Major General of the 4th Division's Western Turbulence Detachment, His Excellency Mr. Okuma Konosuke, was beaten to a pulp.
The combat effectiveness of the 4th Division is still very good. At least after learning that thousands of Chinese were rushing toward Ruicheng County, His Excellency Da Xiong Yunosuke, who was in charge of Yuncheng, immediately made corresponding arrangements.
First, an infantry brigade under his command defended Ruicheng based on its already broken city wall. As long as the Chinese dared to attack, the thousands of Chinese people who could not leave Ruicheng would be sacrificed;
Second, two infantry brigades rushed to Ruicheng with 4 Type 94 tanks, 6 mountain guns, 4 Type 90 mortars, and 4 infantry guns. They used the city to attract the main force of the Chinese, and 2000 imperial infantry formed a semi-surround and surrounded it.
Annihilate it.
Third, the other three infantry brigades of the West Turbulence Detachment formed a defense system with the Yuncheng city wall as the core to prevent the lurking enemies in Wangwushan from attacking.
This military order of defending while attacking and with a sound distribution of troops was recorded in the battle report of the 4th Division and reported to Itagaki Shiro for approval!
Ruicheng and Yuncheng are both logistics transfer bases for nearly 200,000 Japanese troops, especially Yuncheng, which has a railway station. Not to mention ammunition, the various types of grain reserves are as high as 1.2 million kilograms, but that is only enough.
The 180,000 troops on the front line were fed for 10 days.
If there is no food reserve in Yuncheng, the 180,000 Japanese troops on the front line can only use the food for three days. If they reduce the food intake of individual soldiers like the Chinese, they can last for eight or nine days, but people can be hungry, and horses are responsible for huge transportation tasks.
But it is necessary to have enough fodder and refined grains, especially in this winter season when there is a lack of green grass.
And as a logistics base, Yuncheng also has field hospitals stationed here by various divisions. There are more than 1,000 medical staff alone, and more than 9,000 wounded soldiers of all kinds have been received. This is nearly a thousand soldiers transported back to the original city by train.
After the critically injured.
To use Itagaki Shiro's original words: Ruicheng can be lost, but Yuncheng must not be lost.
Even though Konosuke Ohma didn't want to push the good guys from Osaka to the battlefield, there was no room for him to flinch at a time like this.
But Tang Dao, who was dozens of miles away, taught him a good lesson: staying away from the front line is not necessarily a good thing, and being slapped in the back will hurt even more.
Leng Feng, who received Tang Dao's order, marched fifteen miles toward Yuncheng, but did not launch an attack immediately. Instead, he first sent out scouts to detect the movements of Japanese troops in the direction of Yuncheng.
This reconnaissance was not urgent, and it was discovered that Yuncheng had sent a large force of 3,000 people with an armored convoy and artillery team to march along the highway in the direction of Ruicheng.
Isn't this meat brought to his mouth? Leng Feng immediately realized that this was a rare opportunity, which was even more useful than immediately sending troops to attack Yuncheng, which was defended by city walls.
"Save the land and lose the people, and everyone and the land will be lost! Save the people and lose the land, and both the people and the land will be saved!" This is the sentence Tang Daojiang kept talking about for the longest time during the strategy and tactics class.
Under the influence of Tang Dao, the battalion commanders of the Si Xing Regiment had no interest in counterattacking to regain the lost city. Effectively killing the Japanese's effective forces was what they should do most at this time.
Therefore, as the cold front approached less than 8 miles away from Yuncheng, Shangguan Yun's troops immediately turned around and set up an ambush on a hillside less than 10 miles away from Ruicheng County.
To say an ambush is actually not accurate, because when Leng Feng and Shangguan Yun's troops arrived in the mountainous area, the reinforcements from the West Tuo detachment were actually only 8 miles away from them, leaving no more than 30 minutes for Leng Feng and others. The Japanese troops
The elite troops will arrive.
At that time, the battle in the direction of Ruicheng had already begun.
The more than 4,000 officers and soldiers of the 46th Independent Brigade are now determined to attract the main force of the Japanese army to death. Isn't that the mentality of scaring the Japanese as hard as they can?
For the safety of the more than 200,000 soldiers and civilians in Zhongtiao Mountain, Ruicheng must be attacked even if the King of Heaven comes.
The firepower was all out as soon as they came up. Four 25mm machine guns fired at an area less than 700 meters away from the city wall, hitting the dilapidated city wall that was less than 3 people tall and sending dust flying everywhere.
But this is not what scares the Japanese the most. What scares the Japanese the most is that the Chinese may be afraid that the mountain cannon will accidentally blow up the houses and people in the city, so they even flatten the muzzle of the mountain cannon and use it as a direct-aimed cannon.
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The earthen city wall of a small county like Ruicheng could withstand such bombardment. After dozens of rounds, the wall was blasted with several gaps.
This frightened the infantry captain who was ordered to defend, and he kept sending telegrams to Okuma Konosuke for help.
Okuma Konosuke could only keep urging the two infantry brigades he sent to speed up, but little did he know that this would send more than 2,600 Japanese troops into the tiger's mouth.
The first wave of blows encountered by the Japanese troops who were panting from exhaustion as they trotted forward did not come from the mountains.
The vanguard troops they sent completed their mission very well. The hillsides nearly 200 meters away from both sides of the road were tested by them with live ammunition.
The remaining three infantry companies of the Third and Fourth Battalions of the Fourth Battalion were actually 350 meters away from the simple road. In addition to various machine guns that could pose a threat to the Japanese army, rifles and submachine guns posed minimal threats to the Japanese infantry.
But unfortunately, each infantry battalion of the Fourth Line Regiment carries anti-tank mines and anti-infantry mines.
After knowing that the leader of the Japanese army was the Type 94 tank, the engineer platoon accompanying the team took advantage of the short 20-minute time difference to bury a trigger bomb filled with new explosives in the grass on the roadside.
The Japanese infantry running on the side of the Type 94 tank with short legs stepped on the roadside bomb. The huge shock wave blew up more than a dozen Japanese soldiers into pieces, and at the same time, it also lifted the Type 94 tank, which weighed only more than one ton.
Turn over and completely block the narrow road.
Three Type 94 tanks that tried to get off the road and bypass the wilderness unfortunately hit an anti-tank mine filled with five kilograms of explosives and were blown into three burning torches.
The four most powerful armored vehicles of the Japanese army turned into a pile of scrap metal without even firing a shot.
Then, the Japanese soldiers who were lying on the ground in a daze after being blown up by various landmines and bombs saw nearly a thousand people pouring out from the hillsides on both sides, bending over and running toward them.
The deliberate Chinese are about to enter rifle range!
"Heavy machine gun squadron, kill the chickens!" A Japanese major who led the team waved his command knife and ordered. "Each infantry squadron, quickly seize the commanding heights!"
The heavy machine guns of the Japanese army began to roar, but obviously the heavy machine guns and various artillery pieces of the Four Troops that stayed 500 meters or even further on the hillside were not indifferent either.
The rain of artillery shells and bullets covered the Japanese heavy machine gun position without cover in less than 10 seconds.
As for the infantry on both sides, one is running down and the other is climbing up. You can imagine the speed of both sides.
The soldiers of the Fourth Line Regiment were the first to arrive at an area less than 250 meters away from the road, and immediately started shooting at the Japanese infantry who were already less than 120 meters away.
Both sides have almost no established field fortifications, they just rely on a few stones and trees to shoot at each other!
In a sense, this is a showdown of courage.
At least in the first five minutes of the battle, the 4th Division had courage that far exceeded their nickname of the 'Innocuous Imperial Army'.
In the brutal shooting, someone died every second!
At least one-half of the soldiers in the third and fourth battalions are veterans who have experienced several bloody battles. In terms of psychological quality and shooting skills, they are actually better than those of the 4th Division.
In this kind of confrontation, which still had a geographical advantage to some extent, the Japanese army's losses were at least twice as much as those of the Four Troops.
But this group of hawkers from Osaka managed to hold on for five minutes, until the hand-cranked alarm sounded shrilly for the retreat, and they retreated under cover alternately.
The bodies of more than 300 Japanese soldiers were left on the 1,500-meter-wide hillside.
And in the grass, no less than 100 soldiers of the Fourth Line Regiment also fell down. Even though Shangguan Yun was strong enough, the corners of his eyes twitched hard when he saw this scene.
The difficulty of this battle is just like what Tang Tuanzuo called them back: Never underestimate the combat effectiveness of the 4th Division.
But fortunately, not only did they have the advantage of terrain, but they were also outnumbered. This could be regarded as the first time since the formation of the Four Lines regiment that a large number of people bullied a small number of people.
The luck of the Four Elements Regiment naturally corresponds to the misfortune of the 4th Division!
Not only did they like to pretend to be pigs and eat tigers, they also met a real tiger!
More importantly, after pretending to be a pig for a long time, I started to think I was a pig.
This chapter has been completed!