At half past seven, the density of artillery fire before the landing reached its climax, and five fire support ships, more than 20 cruisers and destroyers were almost aimlessly firing at the island, and most of the shells did not hit any target at all, but only fell and exploded on the American position, creating a huge crater. Perhaps, many people think that this is a waste of precious ammunition, but this is a lesson learned by the Imperial Navy after launching many landing campaigns.

Comparatively speaking, the difficulty of landing operations far exceeds that of other ground battles, and if we use more direct language, the officers and men of the Marine Corps who rushed to the beach are fighting with their backs to the water, and if they advance, they will win, and if they are defeated, they will die, and they have no other choice. And this is also the most difficult stage of the landing operation, when the marines go ashore, they will be hit by the enemy's light and heavy fire, and behind them is the sea, there is no way back at all, but to advance. Therefore, whether or not the Marines can seize the beach position after going ashore, whether they can quickly annihilate the enemy's defensive forces deployed in the first line, expand the depth of the position, and whether they can consolidate the position will directly determine whether the entire landing operation can be successful.

This is the most critical and difficult part of the landing operation, especially after the large-scale use of artillery in the war, the landing operation is more bloody and brutal than any battle.

The Imperial Marine Corps was formed not much later than the Navy, and even before the Navy was officially formed, the Marine Corps appeared. In the era of sails, the main purpose of the Marine Corps was to maintain order on the battleship (equivalent to the gendarmerie on the battleship, which was not yet called the Marine Corps at that time), and to protect the safety of the battleship when the battleship was berthed in port. Afterward. As the empire colonized overseas, the Marines took on the responsibility of expanding colonies and protecting immigrants. Colonial strongholds.

When the Empire embarked on the expedition, the Marines became the vanguard of the Imperial Navy. Wherever there is fighting, there are officers and men of the Imperial Marine Corps. Especially during the Imperial expedition to Europe, the Marine Corps was the only ground force that the Empire could use at that time.

In the era of ironclad ships, and later in the era of large ships and giant guns, the role of the Marine Corps was even more obvious. And it was only by this time that a landing operation in the true sense of the word appeared on the battlefield.

Before the Great War, the most famous landing operations were the Battle of Hachijojima and the landing in Tokyo Bay, Japan. But what really made the Marine Corps the protagonist of naval warfare was this great war, and the emergence of aviation changed the face of naval warfare, and at the same time determined the main position of the Marine Corps in the maritime battlefield.

Before aviation dominated the oceans, there were two main ways of naval warfare. First, when the forces of the two sides are basically equal, the victory or defeat is decided by the decisive battle of the fleet, such as the "Battle of Hachijojima" and the "Battle of Anambas" in the last war. If the forces of both sides are not equal. The dominant side will take the initiative to blockade the opponent's port, forcing the opponent's fleet to come out for a decisive battle, or directly destroy the opponent's fleet in the port. Eventually, it seized sea supremacy. Therefore, in this case, it is generally after the victory of the fleet that the marines are brought ashore to achieve the final result.

After the advent of aviation. The blockade of the enemy's ports became extremely difficult, especially when a large number of combat aircraft were deployed around the enemy's ports, and the fleet could not even get close to the ports. In addition, the nature of the decisive battle of the fleet has also changed, and the two sides no longer use giant artillery to bomb each other, but use bombers to drop bombs. The basic form of naval warfare has changed, and the importance of islands has been strengthened, especially those in strategic locations, where airfields can be built and large numbers of troops can be deployed. For example, the Mariana Islands, the Solomon Islands, the Hawaiian Islands and other islands are all key points on the battlefield.

In other words, in naval warfare, in addition to determining sea supremacy through fleet battles, seizing islands and using them to control the surrounding seas has become another main battlefield. And to seize the island, then you have to use the marines. In the Pacific theater, landing operations have become the most common mode of combat, and both warring sides are trying to control important islands, and it is through the control of important islands that they gradually advance the battle line and strike at the enemy.

It is precisely because of this that the Marine Corps has become an equally important combat force in the Pacific Theater as the fleet, and it can even be said that the position of the Marine Corps is even more important than the fleet!

New technologies determine new tactics, and new tactics determine the basic way of warfare. In the Pacific theater, for more than four years, not only have the fleets of the warring sides galloped across the ocean, throwing up wave after wave of monstrous waves, and several large-scale naval battles broke out, but on the other side, the marines of the warring sides have also engaged in fierce battles one after another around important islands.

Starting from the Ryukyu Islands to the Solomon Islands, the Imperial Marines launched dozens of landing operations in the Pacific Theater, large and small, and while achieving victory, the Imperial Marines were also quietly changing.

At the outbreak of the war, the Imperial Marine Corps had only 15 divisions, and by the middle of the 25th century, the size of the Imperial Marine Corps had expanded to 75 divisions, of which 40 divisions were fighting on the front line, and more than 600,000 Imperial Marine officers and soldiers fought bloody battles on various battlefields.

While the size was greatly expanded, the tactics of the Imperial Marines also changed dramatically. At the beginning of the war, the first two counter-attacks on Ryukyu Island were complete failures, and although the third counteroffensive was successful, it paid a huge price, and tens of thousands of Imperial Marines fell on Ryukyu Island. In addition to the problems of the Navy itself, the lack of effective tactics of the Marine Corps is also an important factor.

In the capture of Iwo Jima, the Ogasawara Islands, and later the attack on the Mariana Islands after the United States entered the war, the Imperial Marines did not perform well, and each victory was won at a heavy price. In particular, in the Battle of the Mariana Islands, the losses of the Marine Corps were extremely staggering, which even affected the combat operations of the later advance into the Southwest Pacific, resulting in a serious shortage of excellent officers and men with sufficient combat experience in the Marine Corps.

It wasn't until the attack on the Solomon Islands that the Imperial Marines learned their experience and lessons, and they quickly applied them to actual combat. For example, the "island hopping tactic", as well as the rationality of the Marine Corps and the fleet, aviation and other units. Fit effectively. Of course, in these experiences. The most valuable, and most important, thing is the fire support that is most important in the landing operation, especially the inland fire support a few hours before the Marines come ashore.

It can be said that strong fire support is another striking feature of the landing operation site. When the Marines gradually perfected their tactics. A criterion was put forward for the division of fire support before the disembarkation of the marines into two phases. One is the preparation of preliminary firepower, which will take at least three to five days, or even longer. During this period, it was mainly the fleet, the aviation forces to complete the fire strike mission, destroy the enemy's deep fortifications, beach defensive positions, force the enemy to withdraw from the front-line positions, and prevent the enemy from reinforcing the defensive positions. Strike at the enemy's ability to sustain combat, focus on killing and injuring the enemy's living forces, and so on. The latter stage is the direct fire preparation for half an hour to several hours before the Marines come ashore, and the fire preparation at this stage has only one purpose. That is to completely break the enemy's will to resist, to destroy the enemy's chain of command, so that the enemy cannot organize effective resistance when the marines come ashore, and wait until the enemy reacts. The Marines had already captured the beach positions and successfully completed the first phase, which was the most critical combat operation.

Someone gave the fire strike for these few hours an extremely vivid name - the "suffocation effect". And the meaning of this is that within half an hour to several hours, a powerful, fierce, and extremely dense fire strike paralyzed the entire enemy army, as if a person had been suffocated, losing the ability to move, and even the ability to resist. And to achieve this goal, the only way is to throw a large amount of ammunition onto the enemy's position in a short period of time, no longer pursuing the accuracy and accuracy of the strike, there is only one purpose, that is, to completely paralyze the enemy with so fierce artillery fire that it can no longer be fierce, lose the will to resist, try to resist, and unable to effectively carry out combat operations!

This experience was actually summed up from the landing in Port Moresby, when the First Task Force (without aircraft carriers) under the command of Tan Renhao threw hundreds of tons of artillery shells on the beach before the Marines landed, causing the US command to lose control and there was no way to resist the Marines who came ashore, and as a result, the Marines successfully completed the first phase of the landing operation. The Imperial Marines quickly summed up this experience and began to use it in later landing operations, and the direct equipping of the landing fleet with fire support ships is a concrete manifestation.

Between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m., more than 20 ships poured more than 12,000 artillery shells and rockets on the US landing site, and the bomber group of the First Task Force dropped hundreds of bombs. And in this hour, the amount of ammunition dropped reached 1,100 tons, and almost all of these ammunition fell on the landing field, which is three kilometers long and half a kilometer deep, that is, a total of 1,100 tons of ammunition were dropped on this land with an area of less than two square kilometers, and on average, two to three shells fell per square meter!

If you are immersed in the scene, you can feel how dense the artillery fire is, and for the US officers and soldiers in it, maybe even hell is not so terrifying. The fierce artillery preparation eventually caused most of the US troops to lose their combat capability for a short time, and many US troops hiding in underground fortifications were even directly stunned by large-caliber artillery shells. The landing ground was like a volcanic crater, the earth was shaking, the cannonballs were roaring, as if the whole world was going to be destroyed. And when the officers and men of the US army reacted, when the command system of the US army was adjusted, the officers and men of the Imperial Marine Corps had already washed up on the beach in landing craft, and the landing operation officially began!

At 8:40 a.m., the first two regiments of marines washed up on the beach. Han Shaofeng did not invest more beach-rushing troops, after all, the landing ground was so wide, and the strength of the two regiments was enough to seize the beach position.

When the first batch of Marine officers and men rushed to the US defensive positions, the landing craft returned to the fleet to transport the second batch of landing troops, while the support ships began to provide precision fire support to the Marine officers and men, and the fire support ships began to carry out covering strikes to the depth of the US defensive line.

In the first half hour, the U.S. forces put up only sporadic resistance, and all of them were quickly dealt with by the Marines. It was not until after 10 p.m. that the U.S. troops seemed to have suddenly come to their senses, and the resistance fire gradually intensified, but at this time, the officers and men of the Marine Corps had already rushed into the U.S. positions, and the two sides began to fight for every trench and pillbox on the position, and the battle entered a white-hot state.

Just after 10 o'clock, the second batch of three regiments of marines were sent to the beach, and two of the infantry regiments were immediately put into front-line combat operations, while the engineering regiment began to build infrastructure on the beach.

By about twelve o'clock, two Marine divisions had already come ashore, and the first phase of the landing operation was basically over. At this time, Han Shaofeng also roughly judged from the strength of the US army's resistance and the size of the reinforcements that the US military on Gardner Island would not exceed 10,000.

This made him breathe a sigh of relief, maybe the third Marine Division did not need to be sent at all, with two Marine Divisions, more than 20,000 officers and soldiers would be enough to capture Gardner Island.

Ground fighting continued, and by evening, the shelling formations were returning to the open sea to receive ammunition supplies, and the Marines had established a landing field three kilometers wide and between 500 and 800 meters deep. In other words, the entire western part of Gardner Island fell into the hands of the Marines, and the American troops retreated to the eastern part of the island.

Han Shaofeng also moved his headquarters to the beach in the evening, at this time there were already two regiments, more than 4,000 engineers building infrastructure on the beach, the improvised dock is being built, probably can be completed at night, when the transport ships can send a large number of weapons and equipment, ammunition and materials to the beach, without the need to use small landing craft to run back and forth.

The landing operation in the first ten hours was very smooth, and it was so smooth that Han Shaofeng himself couldn't believe it.