Rise From Eight Hundred

Early in the morning of the 22nd, the artillery of the Four-Line Regiment began to bombard again, using incendiary bombs.

The Japanese infantrymen had not even had their hot porridge in their mouths when they were shocked by the overwhelming incendiary bombs and spilled all on the ground.

Compared to the delicious breakfast, life is obviously more important.

The Chinese incendiary bombs are different from the sulfur bombs equipped by the Japanese artillery. They are mixed with white phosphorus and other chemicals. The tiny flames look beautiful, but it is terrible when they fall on your body. Not only can they burn through your cotton clothes, but they can also burn into your skin and burn to your bones.

Although there are many evergreen trees here, ordinary fires cannot ignite them, but under the power of this incendiary bomb, they burn vigorously.

Originally, the early morning of the coldest days of winter was the coldest, and the temperature was definitely below zero degrees, but after the rampage of this incendiary bomb, the temperature of the entire battlefield rose by at least ten degrees, and cotton clothes could not be worn.

Fortunately, after yesterday evening's lesson, Major General Jingu ordered the entire army to build individual anti-artillery holes and other fortifications overnight. The main destructive effect of incendiary bombs is burning, and the destructive power of incendiary bombs on fortifications is not as great as that of explosive grenades. As long as you hide in the anti-artillery hole, unless you are too unlucky to be hit directly by the shells, your life can still be saved.

However, under the hard bombardment of 12 mountain guns and more than a dozen mortars, more than a dozen hilltops were on fire, and the smoke went straight to the sky.

The 24 mountain guns of the Jingu Detachment also began to retaliate, and also blew up the high ground of Sifang Bay.

The artillery of both sides fought back and forth, which was so lively.

But soon, the artillery of both sides, who were sweating profusely and wished they could go shirtless in the winter, slowed down their movements.

Because a dull roar came from the horizon, and within two minutes, a large number of black spots flew in the light of the winter sunrise.

Compared with the Chinese artillerymen who shouted and pushed the artillery into the concealed fortifications, the Japanese artillerymen looked much more relaxed.

If nothing unexpected happened, it should be the Imperial fighter planes that came. Although the Navy fools were not trustworthy, their bombs were still reliable and rarely bombed by mistake.

However, as the fleet approached and began to lower the altitude, the Japanese commanders who looked at the sky with high-powered binoculars waved their hands in fear and shouted for the artillery to stop bombarding and dodge.

Because the tail of the plane they saw was not painted with a bright red sun, but white.

This time it was not the fighter planes of the Japanese Navy, but the fleet of the Chinese Air Force, a total of 24 wildcat fighters and 8 bombers.

The fleet of 32 fighter planes was a large-scale bomber fleet that rarely appeared in the Chinese Air Force in the past two years. Even the bombing of Yiling and Jingmen Airports did not use such a large-scale fleet.

So how did this bad luck befall a small Jingu Detachment?

Commander Tang knew how bad this guy was, but the Chinese Military and Political Department and the Air Force Command would not know. From a tactical point of view, it would not be the turn of the Jingu Detachment to be bombed like this.

That was all the idea of ​​Commander Chen, who was stationed in Enshi. On the evening of the 21st, this civil engineering leader received the battle report from Division Commander Hu about the Japanese army's movements that day, and the clouds on his face were almost thick enough to drip water.

The so-called "civil engineering" is actually eighteen when it is split up. To put it bluntly, without the 18th Army, the civil engineering department will lose its foundation. The Battle of Shipai is not only about the survival of the country, but also about the future position of him, the leader of the civil engineering department, in the army.

The two main divisions of the 18th Army have been extremely hard in the central battlefield and the right wing battlefield of Shipai. Although Division Commander Hu still has two regiments of reserve troops that have not been pulled to the battlefield, which means that there is still a chance to fight, but that is only the position of the 18th Army, not for others.

Especially the extremely important left wing position. If the flank is breached, no matter how strong the 18th Army is, it will be difficult to resist the encirclement of tens of thousands of Japanese troops on three sides.

The combat effectiveness of the Four-Line Regiment has actually far exceeded the imagination of the commander-in-chief. It has already blocked the attack of 40,000 Japanese troops in Niuchangpo and Zhujiaping. No matter from which angle, Commander Chen can no longer ask the Four-Line Regiment to do better.

But on the afternoon of the 21st, with a Japanese army of more than 7,000 troops bypassing the Zhujiaping defense line and directly attacking the flank of the central position of Shipai, the situation took a sharp turn for the worse.

If Commander Chen guessed correctly, in order to resist 40,000 Japanese troops, the main force of the Four-Line Regiment has already been exhausted. Although there are still many troops in Sifang Bay, it is impossible to stop the crazy attack of 7,000 Japanese troops.

The central position of Shipai, which is nearly 10 kilometers away from Sifang Bay, is also in danger. The division commander surnamed Hu is determined to fight the Japanese army to the death on the second line of defense and never retreat. The reserve troops of the two regiments have already gone to the battlefield, and they are powerless to support the flank.

As the saying goes, the lips are cold and the teeth are dead. Commander Chen thought for a long time and actually bypassed the Military and Political Department and found Commander Zhou of the Air Force through personal connections, asking him to use fighter planes to assist the left wing battlefield of Shipai.

Little did he know that this person also owed a big favor to Tang Dao. Without Tang Dao, his air force would only have a hundred or so old fighter planes available. Where did the nearly 100 wildcat fighter planes come from?

In the past six months, because of the addition of wildcat fighter planes, the Chinese Air Force has completed several bombings of airports occupied by the Japanese army, which has strongly supported the ground battlefield in the two lakes area, so that he has been praised by that person on many occasions.

After receiving Commander Chen's request and returning a favor to Tang Dao, Commander Zhou called Zheng Ruoyu, who had been promoted to deputy squadron leader of the Air Force, and Shen Chonghai, who had been promoted to deputy commander of the 13th Air Force Squadron, to his residence overnight to listen to the opinions of these two ace pilots and Air Force commanders.

What else did the two have to say? When they heard that they were going to support the Four-Line Regiment, they naturally expressed their full efforts.

The three of them hit it off and immediately gathered all the fighters and bombers at Jiulongpo Airport to be ready for departure. At dawn, the largest air support force of the Chinese Air Force against the ground in the past two years took off one by one.

Tang Dao was awakened from his sleep. Before the Air Force set off, he sent a telegram to the 18th Army Command, requesting the front-line infantry to mark the bombing area for them.

The Air Force actually came to support, and Commander Tang was naturally very happy. Of course, he ordered Pang Dahai to bombard the area where the Japanese army was located with incendiary bombs.

Looking down from the sky, the clearest sign is the thick smoke. The smoke caused by the explosive grenades looks thick on the ground, but it is too unclear at an altitude of 1,000 meters.

Of course, before that, Tang Dao also sent the coordinates of its own position to the Air Force for confirmation. Don't bomb the wrong place. Only one hit of that 500-pound bomb can send an infantry platoon into the sky.

Zheng Shaoyu was the commander of the Air Force this time, and Shen Chonghai was the second commander. After arriving over the battlefield, the fleet was not in a hurry to drop bombs. After circling for two full circles and finally determining the bombing target, it began to order the fleet to be divided into four batches and take turns to enter the 1,000-meter airspace for bombing.

The Chinese Air Force dared to be so calm, first of all, it was "the early bird catches the worm". They took off at 6:50, only 330 kilometers away from the battlefield, and it only took 1 hour to fly there at cruising speed. Even if the Japanese spies detected the take-off time of the fighter planes and notified the Japanese Navy at Jiangxia Airport, the Japanese Navy fighter planes at a distance of up to 600 kilometers would not be able to catch up.

Another important reason is naturally a huge shortcoming of the Japanese Army itself. Because the Chinese Air Force was weak in the early days, the Japanese Army's divisions and below rarely had anti-aircraft weapons. Even if they did, the only thing that could be put on the card was a 25mm twin-mounted machine gun.

This is the inertial thinking caused by the weakness of the opponent. The various A-type divisions of the Japanese Army that entered China found that carrying these heavy machine guns was useless. A fool would still carry this thing around. Even if they were equipped, they were basically placed in the warehouse where the division headquarters was stationed.

The Hariya Detachment was originally from the 34th Division, a Type B Division, and was not qualified to be equipped with this 25mm machine gun. The only machine gun that could fire against the sky was the 92 heavy machine gun, which had to be replaced with an anti-aircraft machine gun mount.

However, facing the 32 Chinese fighter planes circling in the sky, how many machine gunners had the courage to stand in the simple fortifications and hold this machine gun with an effective shooting height of no more than 800 meters to face the enemy?

Moreover, the Chinese fighter planes had no intention of descending to a thousand meters. After diving to a thousand meters, they opened the bomb valve and threw bombs one by one at the mountains that were emitting thick smoke.

The 24 Wildcat fighters carried nearly 10 tons of bombs in total, and the 8 bombers imported from the United States carried almost 8 tons. The nearly 20 tons of bombs were just ravaged by the mountains that had been swept by incendiary bombs.

These bombs are all high explosives, and they have a potential energy of more than a thousand meters. The power is not comparable to artillery.

??????55.??????

Except for the high-level air-raid shelters with a top thickness of five or six meters, the individual anti-artillery holes that the Japanese infantry spent a night digging did not need to be directly hit. Even if the explosion was more than 10 meters away, the huge vibration could collapse the anti-artillery holes.

The worst were not the Japanese infantry, but the Japanese artillery who were still firing hard after the planes arrived. Their busy figures were just seen by the Chinese pilots flying over the battlefield through telescopes.

This is not a pillow when you are sleepy! Just when they were worried about not being able to find a target for accurate bombing, these Japanese took the initiative to send it over.

More than half of the 32 Chinese fighters poured bombs into the valley where the two Japanese artillery battalions were located.

Six of the 500-pound bombs were accurately dropped into one of the cols!

A col is only 20,000 square meters, but it was hit by 6 heavy bombs. What kind of scene do you think that would be?

That's hell!

The blast from the heavy bomb explosion could easily throw a Type 41 mountain gun weighing more than 700 kilograms more than 20 meters away, not to mention a fragile human body weighing only a hundred kilograms.

The field trenches built by the Japanese artillery at the side of the gun positions, which were only 5 meters deep, were as fragile as noodles.

After this round of bombing, a Japanese major who entered the valley to check the casualties burst into tears as he looked at the wreckage on the ground.

An artillery battalion deployed in this valley had only 3 guns available, 9 of which were destroyed, 6 of which were either twisted or broken into parts, and the mortality rate of more than 300 artillerymen and 120 pack horses was as high as 80%. Those who were still alive were basically either deafened by ruptured eardrums or bleeding from the mouth and nose and were not far from death.

The losses of another artillery battalion were slightly lighter, but four mountain guns were also destroyed, and 30% of the artillery was lost in battle.

After this round of bombing, not to mention the losses of infantry and other arms, the artillery lost 50%, and the sharpest fang of the Jingu Detachment was broken by the Chinese.

"The Chinese actually gathered all the air force to provide air support for this small position, which shows the importance of this position to the entire Shipai. More importantly, it shows that the Chinese have panicked. They have no confidence to resist the attack of our detachment with the power of infantry alone." Major General Yiyuan Jingu is worthy of being an experienced general. Not only can he quickly recover from the setback of being hit again, but he is also very skilled in reverse thinking and can quickly analyze favorable information from disadvantages.

It is this awesome reverse thinking that completely pushed the Jingu detachment into the abyss of death.

Because this air strike that gathered the main forces of the Chinese Air Force was the idea of ​​the Chinese theater commander, not the idea of ​​the commander opposite the Jingu detachment.

In Tang Tuanzuo's tactical plan, without the air force, he could gradually grind these 7,000 Japanese troops to death.

And now, the Japanese army that has lost half of its heavy firepower to attack is undoubtedly more in line with his wishes.

"Attack! We must kill the Chinese while they are trembling, and hang their bodies as victory flags on the top of this beautiful mountain, so that they know that this is the price of being an enemy of our Jingu Detachment." Jingu Yiyuan ordered with a ferocious look in his eyes.

"In addition, inform the whole detachment that after this battle, our detachment will march to Zigui, and all the Chinese villages encountered along the way will be destroyed, and the property harvested will belong to the imperial officers and soldiers."

This military order was quickly spread to the whole army, and the Japanese infantrymen of the Jingu Detachment, whose morale was low due to artillery and bombing, were instantly revived with full blood.

Killing and looting are the best rewards for the beasts. With this promise from Major General Jingu Yiyuan, the bloodshot eyes of the Japanese infantrymen are full of the howling of Chinese civilians and various properties. That is the fastest way for their poor families on the island to become rich.

However, the beastly Japanese overlooked one point. How could they defeat an army with artillery that is not inferior to theirs by bloody courage?

Before them, several major Type A divisions in North China had proved with the lives of countless Japanese infantrymen that they were not very good.

What about the Type B divisions? Obviously, they were even worse.

The Japanese infantrymen, who were stimulated by the blood of their colleagues and the military orders of the major general detachment commander, adopted a wave-like charge from the first wave of attack.

The MG42 machine guns deployed on the high ground of the 1st Battalion did not tolerate them. In just one morning, the MG42 machine guns of each squad fired 150,000 rounds of bullets, which was 4,100 rounds of bullets per machine gun.

This exaggerated ammunition consumption was so shocking that the Japanese who paid a heavy price would drop their jaws. Even Director Zhuang, who was in charge of logistics, couldn't help but twitch his mouth with heartache when he saw the ammunition replenishment reported by the logistics chief of the 1st Battalion.

The ammunition of the Four-Line Regiment was not blown by the wind. Not to mention how much money it cost to buy it, it was how much manpower and effort it took to transport these ammunition. Do you battalion commanders know? The officers and soldiers of the baggage battalion used carts to carry them over 2,000 miles from the Taihang Mountains.

150,000 rounds of bullets weigh about 1,500 kilograms, which would require eight packhorses or 15 baggage soldiers to work hard.

As a result, your 1st Battalion finished it in one morning.

Moreover, this is just machine guns. If rifles and submachine guns are added, your 1st Battalion must have fired 300,000 rounds, right?

Don’t tell me, the self-taught statistics director Zhuang Da really guessed that the total bullet consumption of the 1st Battalion was more than 280,000 rounds throughout the morning.

And this number is close to the ammunition allocated to the Jingu Detachment, which used 4,000 infantrymen to attack.

Mind, that is the allocation, not the firing volume.

In fact, most of the infantrymen of the Jingu Detachment who died on the battlefield only fired one-tenth of the bullet allocation.

The Zhengu Detachment, whose troops were much larger than those of the 1st Battalion of the Sihang Regiment, fired less than 100,000 rounds of bullets this morning, of which more than 1/2 were fired by more than 40 Type 92 heavy machine guns and more than 30 Type 96 light machine guns.

Leng Feng, the chief of staff of the Sihang Regiment and the commander of the 1st Battalion, was best at head-on confrontation. He did not play any surprise attack tactics at all, but relied on the massive output of ammunition to turn the morning of January 22 into a bloody morning.

The Zhengu Detachment will probably never forget this bloody morning.

Because, in this morning alone, they lost more than 2,400 infantrymen in front of the Chinese high ground.

But, how could the existence of the No. 2 meat grinder of the entire Shipai battlefield end with a loss of 2,400 people?

After a short rest of more than an hour, the completely crazy Major General Yiyuan Yiyuan personally wrapped his head with white cloth, and less than 800 meters away from the front-line position, he deployed 3,500 Japanese troops including baggage soldiers and engineers to continue the attack.

The crazy Japanese major general who had already been on the gambling table was determined to go all in, and he would die if he failed!

The long-awaited 4th Battalion of Cai Yongguan finally got the opportunity to go to the battlefield. The major battalion commander personally led his sharp knife company to the front line.

Moreover, under his order, the high ground forced the attack sequence composed of 300 Japanese engineers to the red line distance of 50 meters in front of the position before starting the battle.

What is called people and horses falling down? The battlefield created by Battalion Commander Cai personally reflects this scene vividly.

The 300 Japanese engineers managed to get more than a dozen soldiers to jump into the trenches by piling up their lives, but Captain Cai, who was holding a thick-backed knife in the trench, did not give them a chance to breathe. He killed seven people in three minutes and threw out the round heads and helmets.

300 Japanese soldiers were completely wiped out in front of an infantry platoon of the 4th Battalion, and none of them escaped.

There was no particularly typical battlefield, because all the highland battles were extremely fierce, and there was no other word to describe it except death.

The sound of gunfire stopped for more than an hour during the whole day on the 22nd. The battle was so fierce that the division commander surnamed Hu sent 6 telegrams to pay attention to the Sifang Bay battlefield.

Until dusk!

The "shit-yellow" remains were scattered on the front lines of the highland positions in Sifang Bay, which shocked the Japanese naval pilots flying in the sky.

In the original words of the Japanese naval lieutenant: That was a battlefield I had never seen in my life. The number of remains of the Imperial Army was like dry grass, and you could see it clearly without a telescope.

The workload of the Sihang Regiment Field Medical Brigade was also overloaded. There were 300 stretchers alone!

The bodies of the sacrificed officers and soldiers carried to the col for storage filled an area the size of a basketball court!