At 5:20 a.m. Tokyo time on April 25, 9:20 p.m. Berlin time on April 24, the first Japanese troops braved the heavy fire of the German defenders and landed at Cape Crelion opposite Soya in Hokkaido.

Just as the main eyes of both warring sides were focused on the front beach, over the hilly terrain 100 to 150 kilometers north of Korsakov, dandelion-shaped parachutes were slowly falling with more than 1,000 Japanese soldiers. Because the German fighter units were attracted by the Japanese frontal attack, these Japanese paratroopers and their transport planes were not subjected to terrible air interception, but the German ground air defense units deployed on the coastline and key areas still caused them some losses, 17 transport planes could never reach the predetermined area, and nearly half of the transport planes changed course or altitude in order to avoid anti-aircraft fire, which directly led to a large number of Japanese paratroopers landing far away from the predetermined location, For these paratroopers, armed only with light weapons, the journey to the assembly point will be long and treacherous.

"Jun Cao! Jun Cao! ”

After landing safely, Private Maki knew that he hurriedly took off the bloated umbrella on his body, and when he saw a familiar figure landing a few meters away from him, he shouted as quietly as he could twice.

"Ouch......"

Sure enough, it was a familiar voice.

Maki sighed slightly, he really didn't know how the body of the fat army Cao could be selected into the first batch of parachute troops, 160 pounds is not an exaggeration for an army soldier, but it is a heavy burden for a Japanese-style parachute that is not particularly large, not to mention that the paratroopers carry nearly 10 pounds of belongings.

"Maki, come and help me! This damn rope! Fat Juncao struggled to get out of the messy parachute line, but his fat body, which was less than 1.6 meters, was obviously in trouble.

Maki decisively took out his bayonet and skillfully freed Fat Juncao from the rope, it seems that this is not the first time he has done such a thing.

"Ouch......" Fat Juncao rubbed his waist and stood up, looking around, "Where is this?" What about bridges? What about rivers? Oh. Damn it! Those stupid pilots must have left us somewhere! ”

Maki sighed again, he remembered that there was a strong wind after the parachute jump, if nothing else, the 18 paratroopers on the same plane had probably been blown away from the intended location for some distance, and the bridge that was originally going to be forcibly captured and destroyed should still be far away, fortunately, as far as the current situation is concerned, the 18 people were not scattered too much.

Maki didn't expect it to be bad, and after a while, there was a low joint "password" around him, imitating the sound of a frog.

Maki didn't know what his commander thought, how could there be any frogs in this early spring, although the ice and snow had melted, but this Kuye Island was still cold.

After about 10 minutes, the paratroopers who had landed near the gentle slope were successfully assembled, a total of 15 people, and it seemed that 3 unfortunate fellows were blown away from the main unit. Next, it took some time for the 15 paratroopers, including Maki, to gather the equipment that had been airdropped together. By the time the sound of a car engine came from the east, the 15 men had their own weapons in their hands - 9 Type 38 short rifles, 1 Taisho 11 light machine gun, 1 MP24 submachine gun, 3 Taisho 14 pistols, 1 ** grenadier and some ammunition.

Although the number of these paratroopers is only 1/4 of that of an ordinary army squad, the firepower density is equivalent to half that of an ordinary squad. It is worth mentioning. The Japanese captured more than 500 MP24s in the Battle of Vladivostok, and the German army's standard submachine gun left a deep impression on the Japanese technical experts, with the support of some high-ranking generals. The Japanese ordnance department immediately began to imitate this submachine gun, and more than 500 original submachine guns, except for a small amount reserved for the ordnance technical department, were equipped with the so-called best paratrooper units, to capture weapons and equip the troops in batches, which is still very rare in the history of the Japanese army!

"Prepare for battle!" In charge of the group of paratroopers was a young sergeant, Cao Chang (sergeant), who had just graduated from the Tokyo Non-commissioned Officer Academy six months ago, and was said to have systematically studied the equipment and tactics of the German Army, but like the rest of the group, this Oda Cao Chang had never faced the Germans face to face.

As the most well-trained paratrooper unit in the Japanese army, after hearing Oda's order.

Maki and the others quickly took action, the machine gun crew found the best firing position behind a large rock, the two soldiers who operated the grenadiers were ready to shoot in the rear, and the others dispersed to form a semi-arc ambush position - the Japanese headquarters originally let the paratroopers equipped with these small arms carry out the task of harassing the rear of the German army, and guerrilla tactics naturally became their first choice.

The sound of the car's engine was getting closer, and three pairs of bright headlights appeared in sight, approaching in an almost straight trajectory. As the distance closed, Maki noticed that the sound of the engine was mixed with another sound that deeply disturbed him—the sound of tracks!

If it was really a German tank, then these Japanese paratroopers had no chance of winning at all.

In fact. The German garrison on Kuye Island does have 3 armored regiments and 5 additional tank battalions, as long as they are properly configured, these more than 200 tanks can drive the landed Japanese troops back to the beach or even down to the sea, and the German commander General Loeb also knows this very well, so after learning that the Japanese airborne paratroopers in the central and southern part of Kuye Island, he used not the precious main tank force, but hundreds of armored mobile squads composed of half-track armored vehicles and wheeled infantry fighting vehicles.

Approaching Oda was such a mobile armored squad consisting of an Imperial Type 1918 infantry fighting vehicle, two Mercedes-Benz Type 1920 half-track armored vehicles and 28 German officers and soldiers, regardless of the difference in numbers between the two sides, the fixed equipment of the Type 1918 infantry fighting vehicle's twin 20-mm machine guns and half-track armored vehicles - a 7.92 mm machine gun and a 50-mm mortar were enough for those Japanese paratroopers to drink a pot! However, at this time, the German soldiers had not yet discovered the Japanese paratroopers lurking in front of them, and they were ordered to search the area with several other armored teams to find and eliminate the Japanese paratroopers who had landed nearby.

In such a situation, unexpected skirmishes soon erupted, and elsewhere in the south-central hills of the island, similar battles were detonated one after another, like a series of firecrackers. For the Japanese base camp, the use of paratroopers to disperse the German defense was expected, but they ignored a very serious problem - in front of the highly mechanized German army. The Japanese paratroopers, whose equipment level was basically still stuck in 1915, could not make any waves at all! You know, the German paratroopers were equipped with light mortars, rocket launchers, anti-tank grenades and even light armored vehicles, which the Japanese army had always been eager to acquire but had always coveted.

Since Oda Socho fired the first shot, Maki has used up the 10,000 rounds of ammunition in the magazine in the shortest possible time and played his own shooting level, after pressing a row of bullets into the magazine, he took the time to glance at the German convoy more than 100 meters away, the German headlights have been broken or voluntarily turned off, although the light is very poor. But Maki can still roughly judge from the opponent's strong firepower that the opponent's casualties are not serious!

Before he had time to think about it, Maki had to bury his head in a steel helmet in a makeshift bunker, and only half a second later, a shuttle of bullets splashed in front of him, and his ears were filled with fierce gunfire and the occasional multi-vocal explosion, and the only grenadier on his side was still firing at the opponent at a rate of 10 times per minute, but the accuracy of this portable weapon was really limited, and so far it had not dealt a fatal blow to the three German armored vehicles that were slowly retreating.

Bang...... Bang...... Bang......

Oda pulled the trigger again and again, until he was still not satisfied with all the bullets in the pistol, and he took out the magazine from his body. One shouted to his subordinates, "Keep shooting!" The Germans are running away! ”

In his opinion. The retreat of the Germans seemed to him to be the first step to success, and he would then take his men to the intended assembly points and try to disrupt the German communications. Then the use of complex terrain for clever guerrilla warfare, the German rear will be messed up by their brave paratroopers, and most of the landings will be smoother, and the situation of the battle, which has been grayed out for some time, will also be turned around.

However, history has proven time and time again that anyone who underestimates the combat effectiveness of the German army will learn a lesson from defeat, and at the moment the two mortars of the German army have not been able to play any role at the beginning of the battle, but as the distance between the two sides has increased to 200 meters away, the advantages of the mortars in range and accuracy have begun to be brought into play, and the two 20mm machine guns of the wheeled infantry fighting vehicle have gradually entered the state. In the shadows, where Oda did not notice, Japanese paratroopers were being mercilessly hunted by the firepower of the other side.

Pull the trigger...... Pull the bolt...... Rough aiming...... Pull the trigger......

Maki continued to shoot at the Germans with a little excitement, and when his hearing told him that the Germans were flying at high speed, he once again hid his head behind the small mound - when it was too late to dig field fortifications, this small mound less than 30 cm high was a good choice, but unfortunately the bullets could not penetrate the 20mm machine gun shells with greater kinetic energy, and in the American and Russian battlefields, the vehicle-mounted 20mm machine guns proved their title of "infantry killer" with slaughter after slaughter.

So, Maki's last thoughts were filled with deep disbelief and envy for the dense firepower of the small German forces. If there is an afterlife, he hopes that he can also fight with such excellent equipment.

In a short time, the German armored search team stabilized its position more than 200 meters away from the Japanese paratroopers, at this distance, the weapons in the hands of the Japanese soldiers could not compete with the Germans at all, and the only grenadiers were also dumb because of the exhaustion of ammunition, and when a mortar shell blew Oda directly away from his hiding place, the battle was nearing its end.

The 15-minute battle cost the Germans the same price as the Japanese, but they managed to annihilate a large number of Japanese paratroopers near the landing site, and this anti-airborne operation was undoubtedly a victory.

One and a half hours later, the Japanese army rashly carried out the second airborne landing under the uncertainty of the results of the first batch of paratroopers, this time the German armored unit was like a moving goalkeeper, and the rapid reaction made the Japanese paratroopers suffer as soon as they landed. Those who were airdropped to the city, near the German barracks of the unlucky people naturally went to hell to report at the first time, with the dispatch of the German aviation units, some other attempts to enter the deep mountains and dense forests of the Japanese paratroopers did not escape the sight of the German army, it is worth mentioning that the German helicopter team stationed on Kuye Island also participated in this anti-airborne operation, although they did not pose a direct threat to the Japanese paratroopers, but their low-altitude search helped the German armored search force a lot, and not a single helicopter was shot down by the Japanese in the whole operation.

The German light armoured units were at ease in the rear, and the appearance of German tanks on the peninsula south of Kuyo Island that penetrated into the Soya Strait like crab pincers also caused great panic among the first Japanese soldiers to land. A large number of German fighters returned to the skies over the strait, and the fierce air battle left the Japanese air force with no time to take care of the ground, and the strong sorties of German bombers and torpedo planes also caused the Japanese ships near the coast to retreat one after another.

At 7:45 a.m. Tokyo time, when the simple and crisp hull of the "Scharnhorst" appeared in people's sight, the German infantry holding the front line finally broke out, and the continuous artillery bombardment from the German 1st heavy cruiser danced like war drums, and the soldiers followed tanks, assault guns and armored vehicles to launch the largest counterattack on the six beaches where the Japanese landed, although more than a dozen Japanese cruisers and destroyers desperately rushed to the beach to provide fire support to the landing force. The blood of the Japanese infantry still stained large swathes of the beach red.

The battle lasted until noon, and the first batch of more than 20,000 Japanese officers and men who landed on Kuye Island had lost nearly 70 percent of their troops, and the Japanese air force that was preparing to seize air supremacy was even more defeated in the face of the stubborn Luftwaffe. If it weren't for the fear that their own troops would suffer too many casualties in front of the Japanese warships, the German counterattack would have swept the entire coastline, and every Japanese soldier who refused to surrender would have been driven into the water.

In the following afternoon, in addition to continuing to consolidate the defensive line and bombarding the remnants of the Japanese on the beach with heavy artillery, the main focus of the German army was on the strangulation of the Japanese paratroopers, although the hide-and-seek battle continued until the beginning of May, but due to the lack of support from the landing force, the collective destruction of the Japanese paratroopers was only a matter of time.