Regarding this point, the Japanese were actually very helpless.
The Japanese have actually known for a long time that the artillery towers cannot protect against rocket launchers. As long as the enemy has a few rocket launchers, no matter whether the rocket launchers are in the hands of the guerrillas or the Eighth Route Army, the artillery towers will only be targets.
But what can the devil do?
With such a long line of communication and such a shortage of troops, it is basically impossible to spread out trenches for defense.
So we could only continue to add barbed wire, mines, etc. in front of the gun towers in an attempt to increase the difficulty for the rocket launcher shooter.
This may be effective against the guerrillas. The guerrillas are short of supplies and grenades, so demining becomes a very difficult and dangerous task.
But for the Eighth Route Army, especially the Independent Regiment, it was too simple. The grenades were thrown forward in rows, and in a short time, a wide and long road was blown up in the minefield leading directly to the Japanese artillery tower.
At this time, the Japs in the artillery building had almost fled... to be precise, they were puppet troops. The troops stationed in the artillery building were usually one or two Japs plus a squad of puppet troops.
The Japanese may hold on in the gun tower, but the puppet troops see that the situation is not good and know that the closer the grenade explodes, the closer the rocket launcher is. If they continue to stay in the gun tower, they will only die.
They were originally just trying to survive, but now they couldn't care less about the Japanese. They ran around as soon as they retreated.
On the Eighth Route Army's side, as soon as the rocket launcher was fired, someone took advantage of the aftermath of the explosion to rush forward, and then stuffed explosive packets and cluster grenades into the perforations... and a gun tower was blown up into the sky.
When Li Yunlong looked at this scene, he sighed: "Damn it, I think back then, we had to put in a lot of effort to attack the Japanese artillery towers. We had to rush with explosive packs and provide fire cover. We didn't even think about taking a few lives."
Coming down, I didn’t expect it to be so easy today!”
Zhao Gang lay aside and smiled: "What? Do you still miss the old days?"
"How can it not be possible!" Li Yunlong replied: "Wouldn't I be stupid to miss the past days? I am praising Xiao Dongbei in a roundabout way. Without the things he did, I'm afraid we would still be the same as before.
Just use human lives to pile them up!"
Zhao Gang nodded and thought to himself, not only the weapons and equipment, but also the fact that the Independent Regiment was able to expand to its current size was also because of Xiaobei Zheng's textile machines?
Just as the two of them were praising Wang Xuexin, two whistles were heard from the front... This was the secret signal set before the war, indicating that the enemy's defense had been penetrated and the railway had been occupied.
Li Yunlong immediately ordered: "Demolish the rails immediately, move quickly!"
The correspondent responded and passed on the order, so the Eighth Route Army put away their rifles, used engineer shovels and pry bars, and pried the rails from the sleepers one by one in a few clicks, and then several guerrillas worked together.
The group carried the rails on their backs and moved back according to the local direction.
This night was very fruitful. All the troops overfulfilled their tasks. The total length of the tracks they harvested reached more than ten miles. However, some of the tracks were slightly deformed during the prying and transportation process and needed some correction.
These are all small problems, and the engineers can fix them quickly.
Okamura Nejina frowned when he heard about this, and felt a little strange at the same time.
However, Yoshio Shinozuka thought this was normal. He said to Okamura Neiji: "The Eighth Route Army has always carried out actions to destroy our army's railway tracks, but this time the scale of the action is larger. General, you don't have to worry about this. We have prepared
With enough rail tracks, traffic can be restored in a few hours!"
Okamura Neji shook his head and said, "I'm not worried about this!"
"Then the general is..."
Gu Zong
"Shinozuka-kun!" Okamura Neiji said: "Don't you find it strange? The Eighth Route Army rarely uses regular troops to attack our railway tracks, and it uses regular troops on such a large scale!"
Okamura Neiji is right, guerrillas usually do the job of robbing railways. Regular troops can easily be surrounded by the Japanese and get into trouble when dispatching in large numbers. The result is that the gain outweighs the loss.
Yoshio Shinozuka thought for a while and replied: "Your Excellency, General, the Eighth Route Army did this to cooperate with the stubborn army in fighting? After all, they have cooperated again now. What's more, the equipment of the Eighth Route Army has also been greatly improved.
Their regular troops already have the strength to confront our army head-on, so they have turned from darkness to light!"
Okamura Neiji nodded and said: "What you said makes sense, but...this is not the only strange thing. Think about it, the Eighth Route Army has occupied Zhongtiao Mountain and has its own iron mines and even iron smelting plants. They
Do we still need to reuse the rails as before? If their purpose is to disrupt our military transportation, they only need to melt the rails and smash them, so why take them away?"
This actually confused Yoshio Shinozuka.
This is indeed a problem. The Eighth Route Army did this during the Hundred Regiments War. They did not have enough transportation capacity to transport the rails in time, so they burned the sleepers on the spot and put the rails on the sleepers. After melting, they smashed them with a hammer several times.
…
This is even more damaging to the railway.
Because these smashed rails can no longer be reused, the sleepers have also been burned and need to be re-laid.
In addition, this method saves a lot of time for the Eighth Route Army.
To put it simply, the Eighth Route Army could use this method to destroy more railway tracks at the same time.
But this time...
The Eighth Route Army only pried away the railway tracks but did not burn the sleepers. This was indeed unreasonable for the Eighth Route Army, which had iron mines and no shortage of iron.
Unless, what they lack is rails.
But how is it possible!
The Eighth Route Army doesn't even have trains, so what use do they need railroad tracks!
Yoshio Shinozuka thought this idea was ridiculous, so he didn't even mention it.
Okamura Neiji added: "What's more, there will be one today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and there may be another one. If we allow the Eighth Route Army to destroy our army's communication lines like this and our army has no countermeasures, we know what this means.
What? It means that we will be trapped in the endless dilemma of supplementary railways and traffic interruptions! This is never allowed and must be stopped!"
"Yes!" Shinozuka Yoshio stood up and answered.
However, although he said this in his mouth, he was thinking in his heart...it's not easy. Not counting roads, there are more than a thousand kilometers of railways alone.
As the defensive side, we must guard every part of these more than a thousand kilometers, but the Eighth Route Army can attack any point.
But Okamura Neiji really had an idea. He walked around his desk a few times and then ordered: "Send two armored trains immediately! We need them to protect the safety of the traffic lines, especially at this time!"
"Yes!" Yoshio Shinozuka responded, and he had to admit in his heart that armored trains are indeed a powerful tool for protecting traffic lines, and they are much more effective than gun towers.
Wang Xuexin on the other side didn't know that Li Yunlong was ripping off the railroad tracks too hard, which directly caused the Japanese to bring in a killer weapon, which created some variables for his plan.