my bright sword career

Chapter 445 Scouting Balloons
Although the Liantai militia has always emphasized firepower to win, it always assumes that the enemy has stronger firepower than itself during training, so the infantry needs to practice how to dig individual bunkers, that is, use infantry shovels to dig a hole on the ground to hide , concealed, in order to protect themselves.

After all, infantry is made of meat. If you encounter bullets and shell fragments flying across the battlefield, you will either die or be injured. There is a pit that can always reduce the chance of being hit. You can use an engineer shovel to build it while lying on your side under the line of fire. It only takes a few minutes for a single soldier to shoot a bunker. After all, the price of slowness is death.

Unlike the soldiers of the Liantai militia who immediately dug foxholes in cover, the Xinyi Regiment of the Eighth Route Army on the left adopted another style of attack. After seeing that the Japanese army had organized an effective resistance, Ding Wei immediately called for artillery support.

Soon, as shells flew in, dozens of shells immediately blasted the Japanese army's third line of defense into thick smoke, while the Eighth Route Army took advantage of the opportunity when the Japanese army's sight was affected, even though there were bullets from time to time. Flying, occasionally soldiers were shot and fell down, but the remaining Eighth Route Army soldiers still firmly attacked the Japanese army.

"Oops, there seems to be something wrong with the front attack."

At the same time, Gao Hongming, who had just come to the rear observation post to watch the battle, saw all this in his eyes, and his heart skipped a beat immediately.

It was only then that he remembered that the training and tactics of the Eighth Route Army and the Liantai Militia were different.

What the Eighth Route Army pays attention to is to dare to fight, to rush, to be brave and tenacious, as long as it can destroy the enemy, necessary sacrifices are acceptable.

The Liantai militia played more conservatively. Although they have implemented the three-three system tactics from later generations into the troops, there is a premise here, that is, when there is artillery fire and air cover, the commander of the army should give priority to using artillery fire. advantage to weaken or even eliminate the enemy, and finally the infantry attacks.

Now the Xinyi Regiment and the [-]th Battalion are attacking together. Due to the surprise of the two armies in terms of tactics, the Eighth Route Army has already attacked under the cover of artillery fire, but the Liantai militia temporarily suspended the attack in order to reduce casualties. The Xinyi regiment was out of touch with the large forces in the rear and became a lone army.

"Immediately order the [-]th Battalion to speed up their attack and not get out of touch with the Xinyi Regiment."

"understand!"

"Bang! Bang!..."

The officers of the [-]th Battalion who received the order immediately understood Gao Hongming's meaning. Once the Xinyi Regiment was out of touch with the main force, it would be easy to be counterattacked or even surrounded by the superior forces of the Japanese army.

They immediately fired a signal flare, signaling the artillery behind to give artillery support.

After a series of signal flares calling for fire support, the infantry who were lying in the crater loaded their bullets hastily and pulled the trigger at the Japanese defense line. Soon the Japanese army's third and second defense lines were immediately surrounded by green fire. , Red, and yellow tracer ballistics shrouded.

"Target 00623! 00704!... Eight rapid-fire shots!"

The artillery school shooter in the artillery observation balloon at an altitude of 400 meters from the front line, after discovering the signal bomb fired by the assault infantry, immediately picked up the phone according to the target indicated by the tracer bullet and shouted out the calibration shooting position to guide the artillery to shell the Japanese positions .

Here I want to say something in particular, although today's Liantai militia already possesses the most powerful air power in Shanxi, it stands to reason that there should be no need for old-fashioned reconnaissance balloons.

But that depends on the situation. After mastering the air supremacy, the advantages of the reconnaissance balloon will soon be manifested.

As long as this thing is lifted into the air, it is like opening the eyes of the artillery.

After all, compared with airplanes, scout balloons have more advantages in terms of observation: one is that they can hover in the air, observe targets at 360 degrees, and can detect targets up to 20 kilometers away through observation instruments, while passing aircraft can It is difficult to get a clear view of a fixed location.

The second is that observers can even put wired phones on scout balloons, which don’t have to be afraid of interference, and can transmit information to the rear artillery positions anytime, anywhere, unlike airplanes that have to type out radio codes to transmit.

Therefore, in the early days of the Anti-Japanese War, the Japanese army was still equipped with a large number of reconnaissance balloons.

Lieutenant Colonel Liao Chuanshu, a staff officer of the Second Division who participated in the first Changsha battle, recalled: "The Japanese army used balloons to guide artillery, and in an hour of destructive shooting, they accurately shot a piece of scorched earth 600 meters wide.

The solid fortifications that the 2nd Division took a year to build were all destroyed, and the entire infantry battalion suffered all casualties, but the positions outside the breakthrough were not injured at all, and none of the shells deviated. "

From this record, it can be seen how helpful the scouting balloon was to the artillery.

However, scout balloons are not without their drawbacks.

The deployment of the Japanese balloon troops was very troublesome. The tethered vehicle weighed 5 tons, and there were more than 10 tethered ropes. When it was lifted into the air, the heavy airbags had to be deployed first, and then filled with hydrogen. This required more than 40 soldiers to operate. A flat avenue and a wide space are required.

Not only that, the reconnaissance balloons have very high requirements for roads. As the war progressed and the Japanese army entered the south, the bad roads made it difficult for the Japanese army's pilling troops. Later, the Japanese army had to abandon the balloon troops and switch to aircraft reconnaissance.

Therefore, after the end of the first Changsha battle, Japanese tethered balloons were rarely found on the Huaxia battlefield.

"Boom...boom...boom..."

Under the command and guidance of the observation balloon, the rear artillery fire fell on the Japanese third line of defense as if they had eyes.

The sudden artillery fire was like continuous firecrackers, exploding inside and outside the Japanese trenches, and the billowing smoke set off countless soil clods mixed with the broken limbs of Japanese soldiers and blown up weapons, and threw them fiercely towards the Japanese army. The sky, so that some intestines, stumps and the like fell into the soldiers of the Xinyi Regiment and the [-]th Battalion who were in the crater.

"Beep...beep..."

The more than ten rounds of rapid fire fired by the rear artillery in time immediately gave the Japanese army who had just resumed some command a blow, and the firepower of the entire Japanese army position was dumbfounded.

Seeing this situation, the company and platoon leaders who had been trapped in the bomb crater by the Japanese fire immediately blew the offensive whistle. After hearing the whistle, the infantry jumped out of the bomb crater immediately, and were fired a hundred meters away like tigers out of a cage. The suppressed Japanese army rushed forward.

Grenades like raindrops were thrown by the assault soldiers towards the Japanese army who had not recovered from the sudden shelling. The infantry still used submachine guns and machine guns to shoot a round first as they did in the first and second lines of defense, and then jumped into the trenches and launched violent attacks with bayonets and submachine guns to the left and right to expand the breakthrough.

(End of this chapter)