Although the Liantai Militia has always emphasized firepower to win, during training, they always assume that the enemy has more powerful firepower than themselves, so the infantry needs to practice how to dig individual bunkers, which is to dig a hole in the ground with an infantry shovel to hide.
, concealed to protect oneself.
After all, infantry is made of flesh. If you encounter bullets flying across the battlefield, shell fragments will result in death or injury. Having a pit can always reduce the chance of being hit. Lie on your side under the line of fire and use an engineer shovel to build a structure.
It only takes a few minutes for a single soldier to lie down and shoot from a bunker. After all, the price of being slow is death.
Unlike the soldiers of the Liantai Militia who immediately dug foxholes for cover, the New Regiment of the Eighth Route Army on the left adopted a different approach. After seeing that the Japanese troops had organized effective resistance, Ding Wei immediately called for artillery support.
Soon, as artillery shells flew in one after another, dozens of artillery shells suddenly exploded the Japanese army's third line of defense into thick smoke. The Eighth Route Army took advantage of the opportunity that the Japanese army's sight was affected to get closer, although there were bullets from time to time.
Occasionally, some soldiers would be shot and fall down as they flew in, but the remaining Eighth Route Army soldiers still firmly attacked the Japanese army.
"Oops, there seems to be something wrong with the front attack."
At the same time, Gao Hongming, who had just arrived at the rear observation post to watch the battle, saw all this and his heart immediately pounded.
Only then did he remember that the daily training and tactics of the Eighth Route Army and the Liantai Militia were different.
The Eighth Route Army values the courage to fight, the courage to charge, and the bravery and tenacity. As long as the enemy can be eliminated, necessary sacrifices are acceptable.
The Liantai militia fought more conservatively. Although they implemented the three-three tactics from later generations into the troops, there is a premise here, that is, when there is artillery fire and air cover, the unit commander must give priority to using artillery fire.
advantage to weaken or even destroy the enemy, and finally the infantry launches the attack.
Now the New Regiment and the 789th Battalion launched an attack together. Due to the differences in the tactics of the two armies, the Eighth Route Army had already attacked under the cover of artillery fire. However, the Liantai Militia Group temporarily suspended the attack in order to reduce casualties. This could easily lead to
The new regiment lost touch with the main force in the rear and went deep alone.
"Immediately order the 789th Battalion to speed up the attack and not lose touch with the new regiment."
"clear!"
"Bang! Bang!..."
The officers of the 789th Battalion who received the order immediately understood what Gao Hongming meant. Once the new regiment was disconnected from the main force, it would easily be counterattacked or even surrounded by the superior Japanese forces.
They immediately fired a signal flare to signal the artillery behind them to provide artillery support.
After successively firing signal flares requesting fire support, the infantrymen who were lying in the crater and shooting hurriedly loaded their bullets and immediately pulled the trigger at the Japanese defense line. Soon, the gap between the third and second Japanese defense lines was immediately blocked by green
, shrouded in red and yellow tracer trajectories.
"Target 00623! 00704!...Eight rapid fire shots!"
The artillery school gunners in the artillery observation balloon 400 meters high in the air several kilometers away from the front. After discovering the signal flare fired by the assault infantry, they immediately picked up the phone and shouted out the calibrated firing position based on the target indicated by the tracer bullet, guiding the artillery to bombard the Japanese positions.
.
It should be noted here that although the Liantai Militia now possesses the most powerful air power in Shanxi, it stands to reason that there should be no need for such old antiques as reconnaissance balloons.
But that depends on the situation. After gaining control of the air, the advantages of the reconnaissance balloon will soon be apparent.
As soon as this thing takes off into the air, it's like opening the eyes of the artillery.
After all, reconnaissance balloons have more advantages in observation than airplanes: First, they can hover in the air, observe targets 360 degrees, and use observation instruments to detect targets up to 20 kilometers away, while a passing airplane will
It is difficult to clearly observe a fixed location.
The second is that observers can even carry wired telephones onto reconnaissance balloons. This thing does not have to worry about interference, and information can be transmitted to the rear artillery positions anytime and anywhere. Unlike airplanes, which have to painstakingly type out radio codes to transmit information.
Therefore, in the early days of the Anti-Japanese War, the Japanese army was still equipped with a large number of reconnaissance balloons.
Liao Chuanshu, a lieutenant colonel and staff officer of the Second Division who participated in the first Changsha Battle, recalled: “The Japanese army used balloons to guide artillery, and in an hour of destructive shooting, they accurately fired a 600-meter-wide scorched earth.
The strong fortifications built by the 2nd Division for a year were all destroyed, and the entire infantry battalion suffered all casualties. However, the position outside the breakthrough was not damaged at all, and not a single artillery shell deflected."
From this record we can see how helpful reconnaissance balloons are to artillery.
However, reconnaissance balloons are not without their shortcomings.
The deployment of the Japanese army's balloon troops was very troublesome. The tethered vehicle weighed 5 tons and had more than 10 tethering ropes. When taking off, the heavy airbags needed to be deployed first and then filled with hydrogen. This required more than 40 soldiers to operate. At the same time
Flat avenues and wide spaces are needed.
Not only that, reconnaissance balloons have very high requirements for roads. As the war progressed and the Japanese army entered the south, the poor roads made it difficult for the Japanese army's pillaging troops. In the end, the Japanese army had to abandon the balloon troops and switch to aircraft reconnaissance.
Therefore, after the First Battle of Changsha, Japanese tethered balloons were rarely found on the Chinese battlefield.
"Boom...boom...boom..."
Under the command and guidance of the observation balloon, the rear artillery fire fell on the Japanese army's third line of defense as if it had eyes.
The sudden artillery fire was like continuous firecrackers, exploding inside and outside the Japanese trenches. The billowing smoke lifted up countless clods of soil, mixed with the broken limbs and blown weapons of the Japanese soldiers, and threw them fiercely towards the Japanese soldiers.
The sky was so high that some intestines, stumps and other things fell into the bodies of the soldiers of the New Regiment and the 789th Battalion who were in the crater.
"Beep...beep..."
More than ten rounds of rapid fire from the rear artillery immediately gave the Japanese army, which had just regained some control, a blow in the head. The firepower of the entire Japanese army position was silenced.
Seeing this situation, the company and platoon leaders who had been trapped in the crater by Japanese fire immediately blew the whistle for attack. After hearing the whistle, the infantry immediately jumped out of the crater and were fired upon a hundred meters away like tigers emerging from their cages.
The suppressed Japanese troops pounced.
Hand grenades like raindrops were thrown by the charging soldiers towards the Japanese troops who had not recovered from the sudden shelling in the trenches. The continuous explosions of smoke and screams in the trenches deterred the Japanese troops from just organizing their attack.
The infantry still fired a round of fire with submachine guns and machine guns as they did at the first and second lines of defense, and then jumped into the trenches and launched fierce attacks to the left and right with bayonets and submachine guns to expand the breakthrough.