According to Du Shihui's combat order, after the 27th and 31st Divisions drove the Japanese army back to Lushun, they stopped advancing in Dalian and began to dig trenches, lay barbed wire, build machine gun fortifications and other permanent fortifications in Jinzhou Bay, and the length of the entire front was about 5 kilometers. The pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info to build fortifications in this place, first, the Japanese fortress was not shelled so far, and second, this is the narrowest area of the peninsula, and the amount of work to build fortifications is relatively small.

Du Shihui's strategic intention was to first trap the Japanese army in Lushun, send airships to bomb Port Arthur suddenly, and burn all the food, ammunition, houses and other materials in the port, and then use airships to slowly bomb and consume the Japanese army's vital strength.

In order to achieve the corresponding bombing effect, not only a large number of napalm-gasoline-bombs, but also a large number of armor-piercing shells and bursting shells, as well as some poison gas bombs, were applied for from the Northern High Command.

2 Janissary Divisions and 2 National Defense Divisions, plus 1 Cavalry Division and 2 Heavy Artillery Regiments, on this defensive line of less than 5 kilometers, was enough to block the attack of hundreds of thousands of troops.

The Hindenburg airship reached Dandong on 6 February and flew to Dalian on the same day to begin bombing the Japanese army.

In order to ensure the timely supply of ammunition, the army built a simple wharf in Dayaowan, which can dock two 5,000-ton cargo ships.

On February 10, all ammunition and other logistical supplies arrived at Dayao Bay, and all reserve work was ready, and Du Shihui ordered to start bombing Port Arthur that night.

As long as the bombing begins, it is necessary to carry out continuous bombing without interruption, so that the Japanese army will have another chance to breathe.

The airship bombing did not have as good an effect as when Zhang Wei was on the airship, mainly because the coverage was narrow, if Zhang Wei was on the airship, he could bomb a range of 7 kilometers on the left and right; The second is the limited amount of ammunition that can be carried at a time; Third, there is no systematic map as a guide, but after bombing Japanese cities, I still accumulated a little bombing experience.

In the first bombing, all the ammunition carried was 100 kg napalm-gasoline-bombs, just to take advantage of the unpreparedness of the Japanese army in the first wave of bombing to inflict the most casualties and the greatest damage on the Japanese army; The target of tonight's bombing is to bomb the old city street first, and then bomb the new market street, and the Japanese army's headquarters, ammunition, food, and other war material warehouses must be in these two places.

At 11 o'clock in the evening of the 10th, the airship set off from Dayaowan and went to Lushun to bomb, and the commanders of the 31st and 27th divisions personally saw off the airship, hoping that the airship could achieve good results.

At half past eleven, the airship reached the top of Port Arthur, at an altitude of 7,000 meters above the ground, and the wind was very strong, and the bombing was much more difficult than expected.

The captain of the airship observed the direction of the old city street through night vision binoculars, searching for targets with bombing value, unfortunately, he was disappointed, in the vast darkness of the night, he could only see the outline of the old city wall, the interior was pitch black, there was no choice but to carry out carpet bombing within the city wall.

After thinking about it for a while, the captain decided to start bombing from the north first, bombing around the inner side of the city wall to trap the Japanese troops in the city, and then gradually bombing the rest of the city to completely annihilate the Japanese troops in the old city block.

At the command of the captain, more than 50 people on board the ship began to move, except for the pilot who was responsible for controlling the navigation of the submarine, all the other personnel began to carry the shells; At the request of the captain, the airship flew at a speed of 12 kilometers per hour, and at this speed, it was required to drop at least 3 shells per minute to have a good bombing effect at a distance of 200 meters per minute; The captain ordered the left and right bomb ports to be opened at the same time, so that the bombing area could be increased.

The captain commanded: "Start dropping bombs!" “

The soldiers on the ship began to drop bombs in order, and one shell after another flew quickly towards the ground under the cover of darkness.

Soon, a huge explosion was made on the ground, followed by a sky-high flame, and the splash of gasoline quickly ignited the surrounding combustibles, and the fire quickly spread to all sides, and after many incendiary bombs fell, the fire area also rapidly expanded, and connected together.

At this time, the Japanese army had long since rested, leaving only the officers and soldiers on duty. Port Arthur was protected like an iron barrel, and no one would have thought that the Xia Empire would sneak up on them from the air at night.

The soldiers on duty thought that it was an ordinary fire, and the staff officer on duty only arranged for the soldiers to fetch water to put out the fire according to the report of the soldiers on duty, but he did not expect that his misjudgment completely buried the lives of all the Japanese officers and soldiers in the old neighborhood and caused the Japanese army to suffer a devastating blow.

With the continuous expansion of the fire area, the staff officer on duty had no choice but to send the news to Oshima Yoshimasa, and when the news was sent to Yoshimasa Oshima to get up, the airship had already bombed the old city street, completely besieging these Japanese within the city wall, and the raging flames rose up to a height of more than 10 meters, blocking their escape passage.

The sky-high firelight illuminated the sky in the dark night, and the area could be felt relatively bright from a distance of dozens of kilometers, and the Japanese troops in the surrounding forts and fortress groups saw the sky-high flames and violent explosions in the direction of the Governor's Palace, and they all knew that something had happened to the Governor's Palace.

The firelight illuminated the surrounding scene, making it easier for the airship to bomb, as long as the bomb was dropped in this circle of flames, it could hit a valuable target, and the airship began to drop bombs back and forth in this narrow area, until all the 200 tons of incendiary bombs it carried were dropped into the old street airship before returning.

At this time, this old city street was in a sea of fire, and the flames rose dozens of meters high.

The Governor's Palace, ammunition warehouses, grain warehouses, etc., were all burned, and all personnel and strategic materials were burned to the sea. The ammunition depot burned and ignited the shells inside, and hundreds of thousands of shells exploded, making a loud noise, destroying all the surrounding city walls, and collapsing all the houses in the city, completely touching the old streets off the map.

Yoshimasa Oshima and all the members of the staff quickly hid in the basement. However, when the napalm-gasoline-bomb burns, it needs a large amount of oxygen, which quickly consumes the surrounding oxygen and produces a large amount of carbon monoxide gas, forming an oxygen-free zone in the combustion area.

The airship flew back to Dayaowan and ordered the officers and men stationed there to quickly transport the stored napalm-gasoline-bombs to the airship for the second bombardment tonight, the target of the second bombardment was Xinshi Street, which was only the residence of Japanese civilians, merchants and Chinese, and they should be sent on their way tonight, if they were prepared after tomorrow, the bombing effect would be much worse.

The people of the new street were awakened by the loud explosion, and when they went out, they could see the fire on the other side of the old street, but they did not dare to put out the fire, the fire was burning too much. And they don't know it, and this is what they will soon face.

Most of the houses in Xinshi Street are civil structures, which are easier to burn, and the military value here is not great, and the bombing of this place is mainly due to the dense population here, and it has already become a psychological deterrent to the remaining Japanese troops after the heavy casualties.

Only half of the incendiary bombs were used, and the entire new street was in flames.

At first, the Japanese still wanted to fight the fire and rescue the injured, but later it turned out that this kind of fire was ineffective against water, and water could not extinguish such fires at all.

Since it is winter, all people wear thick cotton clothes, and after the fire, as long as they can quickly take off the cotton clothes, they can avoid being burned; Therefore, the people who died this time were either burned to death directly or suffocated to death, and there were basically no injuries who survived.

Port Arthur was completely burned down in this fire.

In this bombardment, all the personnel of the Governor's Office of Oshima Yoshimasa, as well as the divisional headquarters of the 17th and 18th Divisions and the officers and men of the two wings, were all killed in the fire of the old city street; Almost all the police and gendarmes, all of whom lived in New Market Street, also disappeared with the fire; Only the headquarters of the 5th Division was not located in the city, and the commander of the division, Lieutenant General Kigoshi Yasutsuna, and his command were spared, and he later became the supreme commander stationed in Arthur, and the Japanese General Staff ordered him to shoulder the burden of holding Arthur.

However, it was only a matter of time before it lost a large number of shells, food, and was surrounded, and was defeated. (To be continued.) )

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