Bright Sword Military System

Chapter 1854 Ozawa Fleet
Hashimoto Toranosuke correctly guessed that the Eighth Route Army would garrison Matsubara for a long time, but he failed to guess the purpose of the Eighth Route Army garrisoning Matsubara...

Hashimoto Toranosuke believed that the Eighth Route Army was stationed in Songyuan to reduce the pressure on Ping'an Village and Xinjing.

It's normal for him to think so.

Ping'an Village and Xinjing are two strategically important places: the former has oil and is a must-defend place for the Eighth Route Army, while the latter is an important city that controls Ping'an Village and Fengman Hydropower Station. Only by occupying it can energy security be guaranteed.

One is oil and the other is hydropower station. These two places are top priorities for the empire and of course the Eighth Route Army.

Therefore, the Eighth Route Army did not hesitate to use mechanized troops to raid Songyuan.

The purpose was first to capture Songyuan's supplies so that the imperial frontline offensive troops would have no supplies available, and secondly to block the central locations of Qiqihar, Harbin and Xinjing to impede imperial transportation.

This will indeed cause difficulties in the transportation of Japanese soldiers.

If Songyuan is in the hands of the Japanese, then the Japanese train only needs to transport the supplies to Songyuan, and then use human and animal power to transport them to the front line.

But now that Songyuan is in the hands of the Eighth Route Army, Qiqihar's supplies need to be transported out of Harbin via Harbin.

Harbin's railway does not have such a strong transport capacity at all. Coupled with the bombing by Eighth Route Army fighter planes, the difficulty of transportation has doubled.

Hashimoto Toranosuke never imagined that the ultimate purpose of the Eighth Route Army's raid on Songyuan was not only these, but also hoped to use the Songhua River to surround all the imperial troops crossing the river to attack Heian Village and Xinjing.

It's no wonder that Hashimoto Toranosuke couldn't imagine that this was an area of ​​more than 2 square kilometers with more than [-] imperial troops, and it was still increasing.

At the beginning, the Eighth Route Army had several regiments surrounding the Japanese and a large group was unable to annihilate them all.

Who would have thought that the Eighth Route Army at this time would be able to annihilate more than [-] Japanese soldiers in one go!
Since Hashimoto Toranosuke didn't expect it, he suggested: "Your Excellency, General, I think it's time to implement the 'Concealment and Diversion of Forces Plan'!"

Umezu Meijiro nodded and agreed to Hashimoto Toranosuke's suggestion.

The so-called "hidden diversion of troops plan" is actually what was said before to replace the well-trained elite troops stationed in the fortress with the recruits just recruited from the "Pioneering Regiment", so that the elite troops can be transferred to the south to fight with the Eighth Route Army. Fighting instead of letting them sit and wait in the fort would not work.

But of course, this "replacement" must be carried out secretly because of the fear that Mao Xiong would launch a sudden attack on the fortress if he knew the inside story.

This is the so-called "hidden diversion of forces plan."

In this plan, a series of regulations were made for the replacement Japanese recruits.

One: You must practice on time and maintain the scope of cooking.

This is because the replacement is not one-to-one, in some places two or even three divisions are replaced with one new division).

Two: Everything must be kept confidential and the replacement of troops must be kept silent.

This is because they are worried that there may be furry bears or spies from other countries among the recruits. If they talk too much, the spies will get information.

Three: The entire fortress is under martial law and no one is allowed to go out, and all units must do a strict roll call.

This is because they are worried that the recruits will leak the news after they go out or be captured by Mao Xiong and torture them to extract the truth.

It can also be seen from this that the Japanese are still quite afraid of Mao Xiong, and they also understand that if Mao Xiong launches another attack at this time, the Kwantung Army will really be finished.The replaced elites were sent to the southern front. Among them, Matsubara sent a division of more than [-] people in one go.

This increased the Japs' troop strength in the area south of the Songhua River to more than [-] in a short period of time, and they were still the main force of the Japs.

In addition, Umezu Yoshijiro contacted the North China Front, Bangzi and the Combined Fleet. He hoped that a joint attack from several directions could break the equipment advantage established by the Eighth Route Army.

At this time, the North China Front Army was almost ready. Following Naosaburo Okabe's order, the North China Front Army launched a fierce attack on the Eighth Route Army's defense line.

However, this attack only attracted the attention of the Eighth Route Army.

Okabe Naosaburo's real intention was to build his hope upon the combined fleet landing on Huludao.

Lieutenant General Ozawa Jisaburo, who commanded this operation, commanded a decoy force in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, that is, a group of aircraft carriers without many carrier-based fighters to attack the Hawk Fleet to attract its main force.

This mission is undoubtedly the most dangerous, because the Ozawa fleet can be said to have no resistance and only one ship after another was sunk by the Eagle Sauce.

In order to complete the mission, Ozawa Jisaburo had to pretend to work hard to attack the Takao-chan fleet.

Because of Ozawa Jisaburo's outstanding performance in that battle, he gained the trust of Tokyo and decided that he would command the Huludao landing battle.

At this time, Vice Takeru Toyoda was still not willing to use the combined fleet, especially the few remaining aircraft carriers and carrier-based aircraft, for the Chinese war. His attitude disappointed Tokyo, and of course he believed that it could not be entrusted with the important task.

Therefore, Ozawa Jisaburo's fleet was formed directly in Tokyo and rushed to China to fight.

(Note: When Ozawa implemented the bait plan, he sailed all the way from the Philippines to the main island)

The fleet formed by Ozawa is a three-carrier formation, namely "Chiyoda", "Chitose" and "Taifeng".

Among them, the "Chiyoda" and "Chitose" are light aircraft carriers and can only carry 30 fighters.

The "Dafeng" is a heavy-duty aircraft carrier with a full load displacement of 34200 tons. It was also the last armored aircraft carrier completed by the Japanese in World War II.

The reason why it is called an "armored aircraft carrier" is because the Japanese already knew at this time that their carrier-based aircraft were far inferior to Eagle Sauce.

If the carrier-based aircraft is not as careful as Yingjiang and will be shot down by Yingjiang, then it does not matter how many fighters the aircraft carrier can carry. What is important is that the aircraft carrier must be able to withstand beatings!
Therefore, the idea of ​​​​the "Dafeng" aircraft carrier is to reduce the number of carrier-based aircraft and increase defense.

This 3-ton aircraft carrier can only carry about 60 carrier-based aircraft, of which only 18 are fighter jets, 6 are reconnaissance aircraft, and the remaining 36 are all "Meteor" bombers.

This actually means that the Japanese have basically given up competing with Yingjiang for air supremacy.

They had made a plan. If the "Dafeng" encountered the Yingjiang aircraft carrier at sea, the 36 bombers would directly attack the enemy aircraft carrier under the cover of fighter jets instead of engaging in air combat.

On the other hand, the "Dafeng" has super strong armor that can withstand the attack, and it may be possible to win.

(The flight deck of the "Dafeng" is covered with 75MM thick armor and 20MM thick special steel underneath, which can withstand the bombing of 500 kilograms of aerial bombs)
However, the Japanese did not realize that the battle of an aircraft carrier mainly lies in the carrier-based aircraft rather than the aircraft carrier platform.

The moment their carrier-based aircraft fell behind, it was already doomed that they would not be able to win at sea.

(End of this chapter)