Glorious Mission 1937

Although the Allied forces were aware of the seriousness of the matter, it was too late. When they learned that the Japanese army was preparing to withdraw troops from overseas colonies, the first batch of nearly 40 Japanese troops had already arrived at various ports along the coast of Japan.

The Japanese base camp attaches great importance to this withdrawal operation. After all, this is related to the safety of the entire Japanese archipelago and the life and death of the Yamato nation.Therefore, at the beginning of the withdrawal of troops, the tactics of two-way simultaneous activation were adopted. When the Japanese mainland fleet set off for the colonies, the Japanese troops stationed in overseas colonies returned to Japan with the ships they collected, and both sides activated simultaneously.

The Allied forces knew that they had to intercept the Japanese fleet before returning to Japan. Therefore, under the command of Admiral Nimitz and Admiral Chen Shaokuan, more than [-] warships of the Allied Forces sailed from the Philippines and Southeast Asia. And Hawaii rushed to the Japanese archipelago.

However, this time the Japanese navy is also desperate, although there are not many remaining Japanese warships, especially there are only three large aircraft carriers available for combat, and there are not many other large warships, the most are old-fashioned cruisers and small destroyers. Although the strength of the two sides was very different, the Japanese army did not retreat, and the main force bravely faced the Allied fleet.

Japan also knows that the two sides are in a hurry. If they win in time, then this strategic withdrawal is equivalent to which side has won the initiative in the war.

I have to say that the performance of the Japanese army in this troop withdrawal operation was astonishing, and the information was kept secret in advance. Not only did the intelligence agencies of the United States and the Soviet Union not receive the slightest news, even China, which is known as the most powerful intelligence agency in the world, The NSA didn't notice anything either.

And throughout the action.The Japanese army not only acted quickly, but also had a clear division of labor. Who was responsible for what work, and was withdrawn in an orderly manner. They only paid less than 40 losses, and withdrew more than 250 million troops to Japan in just half a month. native.In comparison, Britain's so-called "dynamo" program is simply weak.

However, the Allied Forces did not gain nothing. At least the more than 4 Japanese troops in the Philippine Islands were finished. They had no reinforcements and no logistical support. They fought against the Allied Forces that were several times their own.Even Yamashita, known as the "Tiger of Malay", could do nothing. On April 4, the Allied forces finally captured Manila.Fufumi Yamashita led tens of thousands of remnants of the Japanese army into the mountains of the northwest of the Philippines to continue dealing with the Allied forces, but Fufumi Yamashita himself knew that this was just obeying the fate of the people, and the Japanese army was just grasshoppers after autumn.

In mid-April 1941, Allied forces reoccupied the South Pacific.The specific situation is that China, the United States and Australia jointly occupied the Philippines.British troops occupy Malaysia.China occupied North Korea, Burma, Thailand, Baodao, Hong Kong Island and the entire French Indochina, the United States and Britain occupied the Dutch East Indies, and a squadron from the Nanyang Territory captured Singapore.As for France and the Netherlands, which previously had a very important right to speak in the South Pacific region, they did not get anything.

The unprecedented victory of the Allied forces in the Pacific battlefield quickly spread throughout the world, and people in anti-fascist countries all over the world seemed to see the dawn of victory.

On the contrary, the high-level officials and people of Germany and Japan are in a different situation. They are in constant panic. It seems that the end of the world has arrived. The atmosphere in the country is very tense, especially in Japan.

Japan is different from Germany. Although Germany has found heavy losses on the Soviet-German battlefield and the North African battlefield, the Soviet Red Army has recovered most of its territory and has pushed its troops into Eastern Europe.But Germany still controls the whole of Western and Southern Europe. More than a dozen countries including France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Denmark, and Norway are still under the control of the Germans, so Germany has not yet reached the end of its rope.

But Japan is different. After losing the two important resource bases of North Korea and Northeast China, as well as the energy base of the Dutch East Indies, Japan's main strategic materials have basically lost their replenishment, and Japan's domestic steel and oil strategic The reserves of materials are very scarce, and they cannot last for a long time at all.

Coupled with the fact that the Japanese army lost 80% of its heavy weapons and 30% of its light weapons during this withdrawal, and at the same time lost 50% of its military production capacity, it can be said that apart from a population of 7000 million, Japan has nothing to do with it. It is not an exaggeration to say that the allied forces have no capital to fight.

Because of this, the Japanese high-level leaders had different ideas about how to prevent the Allied forces from landing on the Japanese mainland. The commanders of the combat forces headed by the base camp still lacked confidence in the immediate attack of the enemy's landing forces on the coast to destroy them.In addition, in the previous Philippine operations, the Japanese army had a profound experience of the Allied naval gun shooting and bombing and the power of flame tanks. Many people believed that it was unwise to fight the Allied forces on the coast. A large number of senior officers believed that the defense in depth attack The method is more suitable for Japan, and some commanders even proposed to "allow the enemy's landing force to obtain a bridgehead as a last resort."

Some commanders overly considered the losses caused by the enemy's shelling and bombing, and advocated retreating from the coast and building cave positions on high ground.For example, the operational concept of the 12th Front Army of the Kanto of Japan is to keep the corps scheduled to enter the decisive battle in the upper reaches of the Tone River for the Allied forces landing from the 99th Rihama or Sagami Bay. This aspect seeks a decisive battle.

On April 19, Showa 1944 (4), when the Allied forces captured Iwo Jima and approached the Ryukyu Islands, the head of the base camp and the newly established General Army Command believed that it was necessary to unify the thoughts of the domestic people before arranging a decisive battle on the mainland. If there is no unified thinking, it is impossible to resist the landing operations of China, the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union.

Therefore, the base camp strictly demanded to change this negative tendency, implement the basic idea of ​​the local decisive battle, and put forward the battle slogan of "one hundred million pieces of jade".

On April 4, the Chief of Staff instructed all the mainland armies: "The homeland operations shall be conducted in an offensive manner, and the decisive battle area shall be chosen along the coast, especially in the coastal areas. The operational guidance must be deployed in depth before landing on the enemy's bridgehead. Storm the enemy's weak points where the landing has not been completed."

On the 25th, the Ministry of the Army of the base camp issued the "Manual on the Law of Decisive Battles on the Homeland", emphasizing that the decisive battle on the homeland is an offensive annihilation war, and defense and position fortifications cannot be relied on. Coastal defense should also be carried out in the form of decisive battles.The construction of the position should be selected in the place where the enemy must attack, and attention should be paid to the combat fortifications on the flat ground.Attention should be paid to securing the airfield, combat fortifications, training and combat should be based on anti-tank warfare, and attention should be paid to assault hand-to-hand combat.

On the same day, the Ministry of the Army of the base camp issued the "National Anti-Japanese War must be carried", requiring the citizens to fight to defend the country with the determination to participate in the decisive battle, that is, to defend the country with the spirit of [-] million people rising up for a special attack; and to form a national volunteer combat team to conduct combat training and build positions ; Each defends the homeland and assists the army in combat with assault and hand-to-hand combat.

In the propaganda of the Japanese government, the decisive battle at home is the last decisive battle of the Japanese army. The Japanese army bet the glorious tradition of the 80 years since its founding on this final battle. In the decisive battle at home, it can only and must win the final victory.However, it is believed that the key to victory is to pour all the strength of the army into desperately attacking the enemy when the enemy's front line is not stable; other than that, there is no other way.

Moreover, the coastal areas are not only important political, economic, and transportation areas where many people live, but also because of the local terrain, many important aviation bases are located in these areas.In addition, judging from the lessons of the Philippines and Iwo Jima battles, once these areas are handed over to the enemy and the enemy has consolidated the bridgehead, it is extremely difficult to pull it out with the firepower and assault equipment of the imperial army. The Japanese imperial army was very unfavorable in combat.

In addition, the Japanese base camp also issued the highest instruction on combat methods to the troops-"General Essentials for a Decisive Battle". .Before and after this, when the fleet of the enemy's landing force approached the mainland coast for about [-] kilometers, all the air forces of the Israeli army and navy and the medium and small submarines deployed in these sea areas suddenly launched a special attack on the transport fleet.

In response to this attack, the special attack boats concentrated in ambushes along the coast also launched an attack with the main force before and after the enemy's transport fleet entered the berth.Long-range artillery concealed in cave positions along the coast also bombarded the Allied transport fleet at anchor.

The attack on the Allied transport fleet reached its peak before and after it sailed into the anchorage.During the offensive, use aviation units and some submarines to launch attacks against the Allied mobile forces, supporting artillery ships, and supply convoys; and let some of the special attack boats "Jiaolong" and "Meat Mine" participate in such operations .

When the Allied landing force reached the coast and began to attack, the firepower of all the weapons of the Imperial Japanese Army was concentrated on the landing point.The troops deployed on the coastal land should fight back tenaciously and elusively repeatedly to prevent the U.S. military from establishing a bridgehead and bring the enemy and our fronts into a staggered state of melee, making it difficult for the U.S. military to conduct bombing and naval gunfire.

In addition, when the decisive battle corps identifies the enemy's landing area, it should immediately use several prepared roads to quickly advance and concentrate to the scheduled main decisive battle area, and deploy troops in the main frontal attack position.

In view of the fact that in the previous battles, the armored strength of the Chinese Army exceeded the expectations of the Empire of Japan and caused unimaginable losses to the Imperial Japanese Army, so in "Essentials" special emphasis was placed on anti-tank tactics.Originally, the best tactic to deal with tanks was to attack with the same tanks, but because Japanese tanks were far inferior to Chinese tanks in terms of number, armor, firepower and equipment.

Not only that, the Japanese anti-tank guns were poor in terms of quantity and armor penetration, and the automatic guns that were urgently needed to increase production could not meet the requirements at all due to air strikes.Therefore, the Japanese Army Base Camp believed that the only way to remedy this inferiority of modern anti-tank equipment was to adopt a special attack method, that is, to use a single soldier to destroy a tank in hand-to-hand combat, just like the aviation special attack method used to destroy a warship with an aircraft.

For example, an infantryman holds a flame bottle, approaches an enemy tank, and throws it into the tank's cabin to cause a fire.Alternatively, packs of explosives are placed in cushion-style pouches and fitted with slow-burning detonators.Approaching the enemy tank, throw it on the front of the tank or on the protrusion to make it explode.In the past, on various battlefields in the south, the Japanese army used this method of warfare and made remarkable achievements repeatedly. (To be continued..)