It is not easy to be a hero on the battlefield. It is not something you can do without fear of death.
When the Japanese artillery fire comes overwhelmingly, you will find that it is easy to die, but it is extremely difficult to shoot bullets at the Japanese invaders before death.
Two hours later, the Japanese Sixth Heavy Artillery Brigade arrived at the Huangpu River and began to bombard Songjiang City. Two light destroyers responsible for covering the Japanese Tenth Army's arrival at the Huangpu River Channel in Songjiang also bombarded Songjiang with their 140 naval guns.
Only at this moment did the 43rd Army and the Songjiang Security Regiment know why hundreds of thousands of National Army soldiers on the Songhu front line were fighting so hard against only 200,000 Japanese troops.
The Japanese 150 and 240 large-caliber heavy artillery were really terrifying. Just the sound of screaming in the sky seemed to hurt the eardrums of the soldiers hidden in the 10-meter underground pipe.
Including the 12 105 howitzers of the 6th Artillery Regiment of the 6th Division, a total of more than 70 heavy artillery pieces with a caliber of over 100 were frantically throwing shells inside and outside Songjiang City.
Lei Xiong, who was in Cangcheng and was preparing to resist another wave of Japanese troops before retreating, was very wise. After hearing the sound of artillery shells flying in the air, he quickly ordered everyone to hide underground without even leaving a guard post. The power of the Japanese 150 heavy artillery,
He had experienced the power on the Songhu front line. With one shot, all humans and animals within a radius of three to four hundred meters were wiped out. There was no chance, even if there were fortifications and trenches.
His judgment was correct. Out of hatred for Cangcheng, the strongest defense point protruding outside Songjiang City, the Japanese army actually used more than five 240-meter guns and five 150-meter guns to carry out focused bombardment.
Cangcheng, which had already been ravaged by Japanese aircraft and aerial bombs, was once again baptized by more than 200 heavy artillery shells. The city wall, which was 5 meters high and more than 2 meters wide, could no longer withstand such an intense explosion. At least a dozen places were destroyed.
It completely collapsed, revealing large holes more than 20 meters wide, completely losing its defensive power.
Feeling the terrible vibrations on the ground, Lei Xiong immediately stopped the retreat after asking for instructions from the city. The battle in Songjiang was still very long, and it was obvious that precious troops were wasted in the fortress that was heavily targeted by the Japanese army.
Unwise.
Not only Cangcheng was bombarded by Japanese heavy artillery, but Songjiang City was also bombarded. Many of the Japanese heavy artillery were cannons, such as the 140 naval gun and the 240 heavy artillery. The penetrating power exceeded ordinary people's imagination. Not to mention Cangcheng, which was only more than two meters thick.
The city walls couldn't stop it, not even Songjiang City's wall, which was more than four meters thick, couldn't stop it.
The 12-mile-long Songjiang City Wall that tightly surrounds the Songjiang Inner City was blasted with at least five gaps. The collapsed city wall even filled up nearly half of the width of the moat. More than four fire points within the city wall were directly destroyed by the terrifying Japanese artillery fire.
, nearly a hundred officers and soldiers were injured or killed due to the shock wave of the shell explosion.
Countless houses and buildings in the city have been destroyed by artillery shells. The not-so-sturdy Jiangnan residential buildings can often be completely turned into ruins by one shell. Even the headquarters of Chinese merchants in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces located on Zhongshan Road, which is built of reinforced concrete.
After being hit by two heavy artillery shells, the building was shaken violently, making people mistakenly think that the entire building would be blown down.
If that were the case, this battle would probably not have to be fought. As the main force of the Chinese army in the defense of Songjiang, most of the top brass of the 43rd Army, including the lieutenant general and the lieutenant general division commander, were in this building. Then the Japanese army
The Sixth Heavy Artillery Brigade had just carried out a beheading operation.
Fortunately, the builders of this era who had not yet learned how to cut corners did not let the Japanese heavy artillery succeed. Although the room where the bomb was hit was completely destroyed, exposing the ferocious steel and concrete, the entire building still stood tenaciously. The 43rd building was located in it.
The military command headquarters is still operating in an orderly manner and issuing orders.
The arrival of the Japanese heavy artillery suddenly made the battlefield more difficult several times again. Almost everyone realized that the scythe of death was getting closer and closer.
Hisao Tani dared to pat his chest and say that he would capture Matsue Castle in one day after Yanagawa Heisuke assigned him the Sixth Heavy Artillery Brigade. That was something he could rely on. No one could bombard the city with more than 70 heavy artillery pieces for two hours.
If you can still survive, that is simply not something you can resist with a strong will.
If the Sixth Heavy Artillery Brigade's two-hour shelling hadn't nearly emptied more than half of its artillery shell reserve, Hisao Tani was actually prepared to let them shell for another hour. Hisao Tani had never hated such a Chinese garrison so much.
, before he reached the edge of Songjiang City, he lost more than a full infantry regiment.
But being ridiculed by Suematsu Shigeharu, the scumbag commander of the third-rate division, was something Hisao Tani couldn't bear. After rejecting Yanagawa Heisuke's offer to replenish the Sixth Division's troops from the reserve corps, Hisao Tani had been serving as
The baggage regiment of the division's reserve force mobilized 2,200 troops to supplement the already beaten units, especially the two infantry regiments under Sakai Tokutaro. The supplementary troops reached 1,500, accounting for 1,500 of the entire division.
two-thirds of.
It wasn't that he loved Sakai Tokutaro. Although that Army Major General wore gold-rimmed glasses and was very elegant and had the aura of a professor, he was not his cup of tea. It was because he knew that the main attack would be in the direction of Matsue West City. He broke through the West City and defended it.
The morale of the Chinese army in the city will be shaken.
Although the commander of the China Army clearly sent a message vowing not to retreat, Hisao Tani never believed this. He was not afraid of death because he had never experienced the fear of death. When he saw his companions dying one by one in the battle,
In the face of this, even the strongest warriors will turn into cowards, and the heavy artillery equipped by the military is the last straw that breaks the nerves of those Chinese people who do not know what the fear of death is.
The helpless and trembling Songjiang City under the gunfire is the best proof.
The Japanese army's infantry strength, which had once again gathered outside Songjiang City where artillery fire was raging, once again reached more than 13,000 people. Not counting other auxiliary units, it had already surpassed all the defenders in Songjiang City.
At this time, in Songjiang City, the Songjiang Security Regiment, which originally had 1,100 troops, had only 400 soldiers left to fight. The 4 infantry regiments of the 43rd Army had suffered more than 1,600 officers and soldiers who could no longer fight the day before, including minor injuries.
There are only about 7,000 officers and soldiers who can continue to fight, plus more than 4,000 Songjiang Qingzhuang as reserves, the total army is more than 11,000 people, which is not even as good as the infantry troops of the Japanese army.
It can be said that in addition to the advantages of city defense and terrain, the Songjiang defenders at this time were not at the same level as the Japanese army with their military strength and artillery equipment.
Even Lieutenant General Suematsu Shigeharu, the commander of the 114th Division who was watching the battle from a distance without facing him, felt that his words about conquering Matsue in one day were not empty words.
Two hours later, the artillery fire from the 6th Heavy Artillery Brigade gradually stopped roaring, but the 75th Mountain Artillery and the 75th Field Artillery did not stop the bombardment. More than a dozen Japanese sounding balloons had already taken off, giving instructions to the ground artillery group of small-caliber artillery positions.
The target of the artillery attack.
Mountain artillery and field artillery mainly bombarded key targets and roads in the city that were suspected by Japanese observers.
The battlefield outside the city had to be abandoned. Not only was the outside of the city basically reduced to rubble after being ravaged by heavy artillery again, but the Japanese army that had reoccupied Cangcheng, which had lost most of its defenses, once again failed to find any bodies and sent a large number of troops to search.
, finally found the extremely well-hidden underground pipe network passage.
Finally knowing why the Chinese soldiers repeatedly jumped out to beat themselves up under the terrible artillery fire, Hisao Tani immediately sent scouts into the underground pipe network.
Of course, on the ground, the Japanese army's artillery fire was so powerful that the Chinese army could only hide, but below the ground, with just a few 38-guns and a few crutch light machine guns, the Japanese army could even hit them.
Get on the iron plate.
The well-prepared Lei Xiong Infantry Company even had sandbag fortifications piled in the pipeline. A twin-mounted machine gun hit the Japanese scouts who entered the pipeline with nowhere to escape. The only infantry equipment that could cause damage to the machine gun was
Threatening grenade...
Even the Japanese army didn't bring it with them. Only fools used it underground. It was not very likely but absolutely impossible to hit the enemy and would blow them up into a flying mess.
The remaining Japanese troops were also decisive enough. They piled the corpses of their dead colleagues into fortifications and crawled hundreds of meters to finally escape the attack of the machine guns.
However, no more than five of the two scout teams who entered the underground pipelines could escape the ground alive. We don’t know the details of Songjiang’s underground pipelines, but we already know that the diameter of the underground pipeline network is up to two meters thick and can transport a large number of troops underground.
Hisao Tani, the tunnel manager, became so angry that he ordered mustard gas to be poured into the dug underground tunnel network.
This trick is indeed poisonous. Even if the ventilation conditions of the underground pipe network are complete, there is no guarantee that all the poisonous gas will be discharged. And that thing, even if you don't breathe, can still harm the human body through the exposed skin and oral and nasal mucosa.
Carry out killing.
Unless you can wrap your whole body and stop breathing, and such a person is called a mummy in North Africa.
Fortunately, the Army Lieutenant General, who had expected that the Japanese army would discover the secret of the underground pipe network sooner or later, had already prepared a large number of sandbags and soil at the boundary between the city and the city. When the Lei Xiong Infantry Company at the front hurriedly withdrew, he immediately used sandbags and soil.
The fresh soil has blocked the underground pipe network, which is enough to ensure that poisonous gas will not penetrate into the city's underground pipe network.
At the same time, all the electricity in that section of the underground pipe network was cut off, and the underground pipe network, filled with poisonous gas and darkness, completely turned into a hell.
After all, the Japanese soldiers wanted to know the details of the underground pipe network. They had protective clothing and gas masks and tried to enter after half an hour. Unexpectedly, not only did they inject deadly poison gas into the underground pipe network, the Chinese soldiers decided to retreat.
It also left behind a fatal murderous intention.
The flashlight could not illuminate every angle of the underground pipe network, and the darkness and greenish-yellow poisonous smoke blocked their sight. The explosions of infantry mines and trip mines from time to time became a reminder for the Japanese army.
Of course, the dozens of casualties underground were not enough to move Hisao Tani, who was full of confidence. You must know that he had previously known that more than 3,000 people under his command had been killed and injured. Apart from being angry at the stupidity of his command, he did not even blink an eyelid.
But he did not expect that facing the Chinese army that had completely given up the defense of the outer city and returned its troops to Songjiang City, his infantry gathered outside the west gate wall of Songjiang City to prepare for a storm. There were already two large gaps in the wall and the city wall was about to show "black skin and bright red blood."
"When the strongest division on the surface used force, it once again staged a huge own goal.
When did the Imperial Japanese Army lose its IQ?
To be honest, at that scene, even Shigeharu Suematsu, who wanted to see Hisao Tani's big joke, couldn't laugh.