In October 1944, the Japanese headquarters was transferred, and the 14th Infantry Wing of the 2nd Division had 3,283 people

14 people in the tank unit of the 10th Division

14th Brigade of the 15th Infantry Wing of the 3rd Division 1030 people

The 1st Squadron of the 1st Marine Mobile Brigade Transport Team has 250 people

346th Independent Infantry Brigade 685 people

Communications team: 10 people

Gendarmerie squad 30 people

Total Army personnel: 5,388 people

Naval forces

Personnel of the naval aviation base 2220 people

45th Naval Garrison 400 people

Naval Air Defense (114th/116th Air Defense Group) 500 people

Total naval personnel: 5320 people

Total number of Japanese troops at Peleliu: 10,708 people

List of Japanese weapons and equipment

5066 rifles

200 light machine guns

58 heavy machine guns

1.3~1.5 meters, various mountain artillery, infantry guns, mortars, machine guns, 200 pieces

and 16 Type 95 light tanks.

After the US military seized Saipan, the US military could choose to directly attack the Japanese mainland or Okinawa, or it could choose to attack the Philippines or Taiwan; according to the judgment of the Japanese army, it was unlikely that the US military would directly attack the Japanese mainland or Okinawa, and the US military would most likely attack the Philippines and Taiwan first, and then directly attack the Japanese mainland. At the same time, the Japanese base camp also made a judgment on the defense of the Philippines and Taiwan, and the Japanese army believed that most of the Japanese troops stationed in the Philippines were shelf troops, and they had no combat effectiveness in a short period of time, and they could not ensure the Philippines at all, and if the US army attacked the Philippines, the local Japanese army would not have the slightest possibility to resist the attack of the US army. As for Taiwan's defensive strength, it is relatively sufficient, and if the US military attacks Taiwan, then Taiwan's garrison is sure that the US military will suffer heavy losses and fall into a protracted bloody war.

At the same time, the Japanese army judged that the ground forces of the US army had also suffered serious losses during the Saipan operation, and that it was necessary to rest and reinforce and replenish them, and if the US army launched a landing campaign against the Philippines or Taiwan, it would be launched as early as September. However, the Philippine garrison lacked training and equipment, and it would have to wait at least after March 1945 to have sufficient combat effectiveness, so if the U.S. army launched the Philippine campaign in 1944, the Japanese army would have been defeated.

The 14th Division also made an assessment of its own defenses, and the 14th Division calculated and deduced that if the US troops really landed on the Palau Islands, it would not be a problem for the US forces to fight for two to three months if the division's existing combat capability was isolated and unsupported, although it did not ensure Palau's grasp. The Japanese 14th Division's ammunition in the Palau Islands is not very sufficient, only half of the battle, but the main island's food supply is not a problem, enough for six months, the Japanese 14th Division's staff believes that the officers and men of the division are well-trained, have rich combat experience, superb marksmanship, and are extremely elite, as long as they pay attention to the economical use of ammunition, it is okay to fight for three months with half of the ammunition of the battle, and they believe that the main island can fight with the US army for at least three months without falling. Because Berry Iwo Island is a desert island, there is not much food and water is scarce, and it is difficult to secure water after the battle, so it can't last too long, but it can work with the U.S. military for at least one month. The Japanese 14th Division was convinced that as long as the American troops dared to land in Palau, they would inevitably have a blue nose and swollen face, and even if the division was finally destroyed, the American troops would suffer unbearable heavy losses

From the failed experience of the Solomon Islands, the Marshall Islands, and the Mariana Islands, the Japanese army summed up a new set of anti-amphibious island defense plans, and they abandoned the early beach perimeter defense and reckless "Banzai charge" to adopt a honeycomb system that complicated the island terrain to build an inner island defense chain, turning blind attacks and onslaughts into a continuous war of attrition against the American military. Nakagawa took advantage of the rugged terrain to build a composite defense system composed of reinforced bunkers, caves, and tunnels

On September 15, 1944, the 1st Marine Division and the 81st Army Division were mobilized with a total of 42,000 troops, first landing on Beriam Island and Unger Island, planning to completely occupy these two islands in two days, and landing on Palau's main island of Barber Tuap Island in October, and fully control the entire Palau Islands by October 15. This was a very optimistic plan, the U.S. military thought that the Japanese troops were just a little bit, and that the firepower of the lightly armed troops was limited, so it would not pose a major obstacle to the U.S. troops, and mistakenly thought that the 14th Division in Palau was the same type of unit as the shelf division they encountered on Guam, but after the battle began, the U.S. troops were slapped hard by the Japanese in Berry, which turned this optimistic plan into a joke, and finally the plan to attack the main island of Palau was also abandoned.

From the top of Wuguniang Mountain, you can see most of the island, including the airport on the south side of the island. There are more than 500 limestone caves on Wuguniang Mountain, which are connected to each other by passages. Most of these caves were mine-holes, which were then used by the Japanese and built into fortifications, where sappers installed sliding armoured iron doors to erect cannons and machine guns. At the same time, the Japanese also placed 0.81-meter and 0.15-meter mortars, 0.2-meter twin anti-aircraft machine guns, and equipped anti-tank and anti-aircraft squads at other fortifications on the mountain. In order to defend against the *****, the entrance passages of the caves where the Japanese troops were stationed were all upward slopes. These caves and pillboxes formed a huge defensive system that spread throughout the central part of Peleliu, which facilitated the tactical retreat and reoccupation of these areas by the Japanese army, and well consolidated the Japanese defenses.

The Japanese army did not forget to make full use of the terrain advantage on the beachhead. At the northern end of Peleliu Island is a 9.1-metre-high headland that overlooks the landing beachhead below, which was later called "The Point" by the U.S. military. On this small headland, the Japanese erected a 0.47-meter anti-tank gun and six 0.2-meter twin anti-aircraft machine guns, and blocked the entrance, leaving only a narrow gap as the muzzle of the machine gun. The Japanese also built the same fortifications on another similar terrain 3 kilometers away. At the same time, the Japanese also planted thousands of ** and heavy artillery shells along the entire beachhead, and these *** with modified fuses will explode whenever a person or armored vehicle walks over it. In the end, the Japanese left a large group of American troops on the beachhead to resist the landing, but in reality their main job was to slow down the landing of American troops and lead them to the Japanese fortifications on the island.

In early September, the U.S. military dispatched army heavy bombers to Saipan as a base to cooperate with the navy's carrier-based bombardment of the Philippines and Palau, and the navy's General Halsey came to a conclusion through bombing and aerial reconnaissance reports, he believed that the Japanese troops and defenses in the Philippines were very weak, and there was no need to land in Palau at all, and a direct attack on the Philippines would be successful, so he proposed a plan to directly attack the Philippines and skip Palau. Admiral Nimitz of the Navy resolutely opposed General Halsey's plan, believing that Palau's geographical location was important, and that seizing Palau as a base could attack Taiwan to the west, the Japanese mainland to the north, and the Philippines to the south. Neither of these two men could convince anyone, and in the end, the Joint Staff Council made a final decision not to attack Palau, but to attack the Philippines directly.

However, the telegram not to attack Palau was 48 hours late, the aviation preparations for the US landing on the Palau Islands had already been launched, the US fleet had already begun to shell the islands of Angerand and Berry Iwo in the Palau Islands, the US landing force had already boarded the ship and sailed to the vicinity of the Palau Islands, and MacArthur had not had time to cancel the landing order, so Admiral Nimitz decided to land on the Palau Islands as originally planned.

The U.S. Army mobilized 24,234 men from the 1st Marine Division

19,741 of the 81st Infantry Division (including additional troops)

4,765 in other troops

A total of 48,740 students

41,346 rifles and automatic rifles

1434 machine guns

3399 pistols

729 mortars and ** guns

117 tanks

180 anti-tank rocket launchers

On September 12, 1944, 400 carrier-based planes from 11 US aircraft carriers took off, together with Army heavy bombers that took off from the Mariana Islands, and began to bomb Peleliu Island indiscriminately, and the fierce bombing lasted for three days. On the sea surface of Peleliu Island, three US battleships, 25 cruisers, and 30 destroyers carried out a fierce shelling of Peleliu Island, and after three days of continuous shelling, US warships fired 170,000 rounds of large-caliber artillery shells at Peleliu Island, and the intensity of the shelling made the entire Peleliu Island completely covered in flames and black smoke, while the minesweepers of the US Navy drove to a place less than 1 kilometer away from the shore of Peleliu Island under the cover of artillery bombardment to carry out minesweeping and other operations.

At 6:15 a.m. on September 15, 1944, the landing force of the 1st Marine Division of the United States rushed to the beachhead on the west coast of Peleliu Island in amphibious combat vehicles and landing craft under the cover of heavy bombardment by naval artillery. The Japanese troops on Peleliu Island dug more than 500 holes and built a large number of hidden bunkers that were difficult to find and connected by trenches or tunnels, and the landing site of the 1st Marine Division was the key area of the Japanese army's defense. When the U.S. artillery fire extended deep into the island, the soldiers of the 2nd Infantry Wing of the 14th Division of the Japanese Army immediately entered the beachhead and bunker through the trenches and tunnels, preparing to meet the landing soldiers of the U.S. troops.

When the US landing craft and amphibious armored vehicles drove to a distance of less than 300 meters from the beach in a dense formation, several landing craft and amphibious armored vehicles touched the floating mines laid by the Japanese army in the shallow water, and the people and boats were shattered on the spot, and the US landing craft immediately dispersed and stopped, and used machine guns to strafe suspicious floating objects on the sea surface, and successfully shot a few **, and then the US landing craft and amphibious armored vehicles continued to advance, and the Japanese still did not let go of a shot, which made the US military more convinced that the Japanese army had already died, and after the US troops landed on the beach, they advanced 20 meters on the beach, until 30 meters away from the Japanese breakwater, the Japanese hidden firepower point on the breakwater suddenly opened fire at the same time, at that time the American army was defenseless, immediately knocked down a large area, and then the Japanese grenadiers, direct guns, mortars, hand ** overwhelmingly hit over, the American army was suddenly shot at such a close distance, suddenly a mess, completely became a live target, at such a close distance by a sudden attack any dodge is ineffective, walking in front of hundreds of American troops on the spot by the Japanese on the spot all killed and wounded on the beachThe American troops who landed on the beach were also unprepared, and they were killed by the Japanese on the beachhead, and the amphibious armored vehicles on the ground were also destroyed on the shore by the Japanese direct aiming guns, and the Japanese army's hidden fire point on the shore was only 50 meters away from the coast, so the Japanese hit rate was very high at such a close distance, and the entire beach was full of American corpses and destroyed equipment, and the sea water near the beach turned red, and the sea was covered with floating corpses, and the American troops on the beach were quickly shot by the Japanese army. Because the landing craft were too close to the Japanese troops, the US soldiers on the landing craft were accurately shot by the Japanese and suffered serious casualties, and a group of US landing craft landed 300 meters west of the original landing site, and most of the marines on board had been killed and wounded before they went ashore, and the US ships that were responsible for landing cover had nothing to do with this, and could not fire their guns to suppress the Japanese firing points, because the Japanese and the US troops were too close to each otherThe Japanese army calmly aimed at every moving American soldier in a very hidden firepower point, and the American army did not even know where to shoot back, the two battalions of the first wave of the US army, nearly half of the soldiers failed to land on the beachhead, and most of the soldiers who boarded the beachhead were killed or wounded by the Japanese army, and finally had to order a retreat, and the first wave of the US landing ended in failure, and more than 50% of the troops participating in the landing were wounded or killed. More than 1,000 U.S. Marines were killed, missing, or wounded, 60 landing craft, 26 amphibious armored vehicles, and 3 tanks were destroyed.

The sailors and officers of the U.S. Navy were very shocked, and no one dared to believe that these were the facts, and the Japanese troops on Peleliu Island were still alive and fierce after being bombarded with such intensity. The optimism of the officers and men of the 1st Marine Division of the US Marine Corps disappeared, and they all understood in an instant that this island was not at all a small island with low defense capability that could be easily taken down, and that there were clearly fierce elite units of the Japanese army deployed on it, and it was a dream to take Peleliu Island in two days, and the soldiers discussed that it would probably take 10 or even 15 days of bloody battle to take this island

At 8 o'clock in the morning, after heavy artillery bombardment and bombing, the US troops landed on Berry Iwo Island again, this time the US troops changed the landing site, and no longer carried out artillery bombardment and bombardment of the entire island, but focused on shelling the beachhead of the US landing site, completely flattening the US army's planned landing site and beachhead, so that the US landing force could obtain a safe beachhead, and the US troops did not meet resistance on the beachhead this time, not that the Japanese troops were killed, but that the US landing site happened to be the area where the Japanese defense was weakest. The 2nd Infantry Wing of the Japanese Army believes that the US Army is unlikely to land on this terrain, because it is too open, and it is easy to be caught by the fire on the surrounding highlands, and it is easy to be hit into the sea by countershock, but the US Army just implemented the second landing here, and this landing, the US Army carefully advanced, and soon transported 8 M4A2 tanks to the beachhead, The U.S. military was also worried about the Japanese counterattack, so the M4A2 tanks were transported on the first time to prevent the Japanese counterattack and act as a mobile firepower point for the infantry, and this immediate decision was undoubtedly correct, in fact, if the 8 M4A2 tanks were not transported in time, the second landing of the U.S. army was still the end of being beaten down by the Japanese army.

After the second landing of the American army, the Japanese army did not move for a long time, and the 1st Marine Division of the US Army was able to send troops and equipment to Peleliu Island in waves. The male commander of the 2nd Infantry Wing of the Japanese Army, Nakagawa Prefecture, believed that the Japanese army did not have much ammunition and did not have the conditions to engage in continuous firepower with the US army, so he simply let a large number of US troops come up and inflict a decisive blow on the US troops in one attempt, which made the US troops frightened from then on. When the U.S. troops chose a new location to land, the Japanese army smiled proudly, the U.S. landing ground was surrounded by hills and high ground on three sides, and the Japanese army was on the hills and high ground, it was not easy for the U.S. troops to advance deep into the island, and this open space was not large, the troops of the 1st Marine Division of the U.S. Marine Corps were crowded here too densely, and it was easy to be destroyed by firepower. In addition, after the 1st Marine Division of the U.S. Army went ashore, the U.S. fleet kept shelling the high ground around the U.S. military site to cover the safety of the 1st Marine Division, and the Japanese army could not risk pulling the troops to the ground to launch a counterattack on the U.S. Army, Nakagawa Prefecture ordered the Japanese army to monitor the landing U.S. troops, and at the same time ordered to draw out a counterattack force of 1,000 people, Nakagawa Shoo believed that although the U.S. naval artillery cover was powerful, such a high-intensity artillery bombardment would inevitably lead to excessive ammunition consumption and stop, Although the U.S. military has ammunition ships to follow, it takes time to replenish the ammunition, and after a period of intensive artillery bombardment, the U.S. naval guns will inevitably have an intermittent process, and this is the best time for the Japanese to pull their troops to the ground and hit the U.S. troops into the sea.

The 2nd Infantry Wing of the Japanese Army finally decided to give a decisive attack to the US Army on the 15th, but the total strength of the 2nd Infantry Wing was only more than 3,200 people, in addition to the 2nd Infantry Wing, there were also the 45th Garrison of the Navy on the island, the 346th Independent Infantry Brigade of the 1st Brigade of the Army Maritime Mobile Brigade and the tank search team of the 14th Division, the total strength was only 5,000 people, to ensure that in case of the failure of the counterattack, there were enough guard forces, and at most 1,000 infantry could be drawn out for counter-shock. According to the observation that the troops landed in the 1st Marine Division of the US Army were as high as about 15,000 people, and only 1,000 infantry counterattacked 15,000 US troops, which was not very sure, so the commander of the 2nd Infantry Wing, who commanded the Japanese operations on the whole island, decided to launch a counterattack with all 16 Type 95 light tanks of the 14th Division. Out of the battle, when the counter-shock was launched, the Type 95 light tank of the tank team rushed into the US military camp at full speed from the flank heights, rushed to the rear of the US army along the coast, destroyed the US beachhead materials, shot a large number of US soldiers to create chaos, and fired fire on the two flanks to hit the US troops in the chaos, and then the Japanese 1000 infantry attacked the US camp head-on to ensure that the US army was defeated in one fell swoop, and in order to ensure the success of the counterattack, the Japanese army will also concentrate artillery fire on the US camp, The 1.05-meter mountain guns, 6 7.5-meter mountain guns, 12 1.5-meter mortars, 12 0.9-meter mortars, 6 0.7-meter Type 92 infantry guns, 12 0.81-meter Type 92 infantry guns and 4 0.75-meter mountain guns of the 346th Independent Infantry Brigade and 2 0.81-meter Type 92 infantry guns were all put into the bombardment.